


The Mind Cage

by PengyChan



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Sibling Bonding, Suicidal Thoughts, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-12
Updated: 2017-03-11
Packaged: 2018-08-14 17:21:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 77,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8022523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PengyChan/pseuds/PengyChan
Summary: In another world, Stanford Pines places a metal plate in his skull far too soon. In another world, Bill Cipher is in the wrong place at the wrong time.





	1. Caged

**Author's Note:**

> I just realized I hadn't posted this here yet, so here it is. 
> 
> I found this among my drafts, and I thought I may as well post it. It was written before Journal 3 came out, obviously enough, but I still like the idea. Also watch out for mentions of alcohol abuse and, generally, Bill being bad news for Ford’s mental health. And also just plainly bad news.
> 
> Art for this fic can be found [here](http://pengychan.tumblr.com/tagged/the%20mind%20cage).

“Not that it’s any of my business, buddy, but why on earth--”

“As you said just now, it is none of your business.”

The man tilted his head as though to concede the point, and didn’t press the matter any further: all he did was busying himself counting the money once more - a large wad of cash that was most of what remained of Ford’s grant for research. Still, he didn’t mind parting from it. It would be put to good use. The only thing that mattered right then was keeping Bill Cipher out of his mind. Keeping Bill out of their world as well would come easier once he had achieved that, wouldn’t it?

_Wouldn’t it?_

“Very well. I’ll get everything ready by tomorrow. Don’t eat until then, shave your head, yadda yadda. And stop doing that,” he added as soon as Ford pulled a flask out of his pocket to take a good swig of liquor. “Anaesthesia doesn’t go well with alcohol.”

Ford grunted, but he knew the man had a point, and put the flask away. He wiped his mouth with a sleeve. “Is general anaesthesia strictly necessary?”

“To put a metal plate in your skull? You _bet_ it is.”

“I’d rather not be asleep for too long.”

“I’ll see what I can do. Not gonna risk you waking up halfway through, buddy. I’m a professional.”

“You’re an entirely unlicensed sawbones performing illegal surgery.”

A shrug. “And you’re the kind of weirdo who’s desperate or crazy enough to resort to my services,” he said, pocketing the cash. “Tomorrow at nine. Come with an empty stomach. And _sober_. If you’re gonna put that bottle to your head and pull the trigger, do it well away from my business.”

Ford made a point to make his ‘of course’ sound as disdainful as possible, but he did pause to empty the flask on the ground once outside.

* * *

Bill had to admit that Sixer’s attempts at keeping him out of his mind - or at least out of the relevant parts of it - were sort of adorable. Not only he had covered all of his images in his house, clearly having realized those were all peepholes in his world for Bill to use, but he had gone as far as willing his Mindscape into _changing_. What had been open space, bits of knowledge and possibilities was now endless corridors shrouded in fog, twisty paths and doors leading nowhere, made-up memories and encrypted thoughts.

Not that it was easy to tell which ones were encrypted and which ones were just muddled by whiskey but hey, it was still a pretty nice effort. He was putting up a fight, and Bill liked it. Too bad it was going to be useless, because he would have to lower his guard at some point. He would slip up, and when he did Bill would be there to seize the chance.

They needed a chat, really. Nothing big. A chat while he was at his most vulnerable, some buttering up, maybe a tiny little deal. He had trusted him before, he could make him trust him again. All he needed was getting him to reveal where he had hidden his journals with the instructions, just enough for him to activate the portal again. That was it. One moment of weakness, and the party could finally start.

Heck, maybe good old Six Fingers would enjoy it once he stopped being such a bore and learned how to have fun. He just needed to understand what it was that Bill could offer him. They needed to have a little talk, that was all.

Just. A little. _Talk_.

* * *

Falling asleep had never been easy business for Ford, his mind often working at full speed even when his body screamed for rest. How _could_ he sleep, with so many questions unanswered?

Ever since finding out what Bill’s true face was, however, what had kept him awake wasn’t boundless curiosity as much as it was boundless terror. Terror what what he may have unleashed upon the world, of what truly awaited behind that portal - of what would happen if he lowered his guard, if Bill was able to use him one last time to tear apart the fragile barrier left between their worlds.

But anaesthetic, he suspected, would be more than enough to _make_ him sleep.

“Okay, buddy. Deep breaths and get counting.”

He breathed in, and felt panic trying to grip his chest when his vision began blurring.

_It won’t be long. I’ll be awake soon, and Cipher won’t be able to return in my mind ever again._

Between the lack of glasses and the anaesthetic kicking in, it was hard for him to make out anything except the vague outline of the surgeon’s face above him.

* * *

Stanford Pines’ defenses dropped so quickly and suddenly that there was simply no way for Bill _not_ to feel the ripples across the Mindscape. A bit unusual, that, but not at all surprising: good old Six Fingers seemed so intent into drinking himself into an early grave, it was actually weird how he hadn’t collapsed sooner.

Ah well. It made things easier for him, and he wasn’t gonna question it.

He should have.

* * *

“You know what, IQ? This place looks waaaay better when you’re passed out. Cleaner. Was kinda getting lost in the maze you’d thought up. But I guess that was the point, wasn’t it?”

Cipher’s voice was the first thing he heard when he opened his eyes again, and it chilled him to the core. That was wrong, it was all wrong - he was not supposed to be there at all, not then, not while he was trying to _keep him out_.

“Get out of my mind,” Ford gritted out, turning to face him. His mindscape looked more like it did before the betrayal - the vastness of space littered with all the knowledge he possessed and could potentially unlock one day - but there was something subtly wrong about it as well. The stars were not as luminous, the whole scenario wavering around him like a backdrop hit by wing, and nothing but warnings written in red were to be seen on the books and scrolls that floated through it.

And, hovering above all, was Bill Cipher.

“Sheesh, not even giving a friend a chance to explain himself?” Bill said, rolling his eye. “Should have known, I guess. That’s just your style, ain’t it? Not letting anyone explain themselves before kicking them out. Like with your bro, huh?”

 _Stanley. Stanley will come soon, I found him, I wrote him, he must come. He must_.

Hiding that thought from Bill wasn’t easy, especially now that he was in his mind, and had to make a terrible effort to cover it - but anger was already rearing up its head, hot and blistering, and that worked just fine for him. It was a _distraction_ , for both of them.

“Don’t you dare,” he gritted out, and Bill laughed.

“Uh-oh, touchy subject! But that’s just what happened, isn’t it? You let him be kicked out without _listening_. And your assistant, too. You just-- Nah, wait, it was the other way around. Fiddlesticks kicked his own damn self out, didn’t he? Will sooner _forget_ you exist - washed his hands of you and the whole project the moment he decided he didn’t wanna play anymore. Some friend. Can you just take note that I’m the one who’s _staying_ and trying to get you to see the light, Fordsy?”

Ford scoffed, hands clenching into fists so tight that his fingernails sank into his palms. “You have deceived me from the very start, and you have the galls to claim--”

“Whoa there,” Bill cut him off, moving in with a sudden start and pausing just a couple of inches away from Ford’s own face. “I don’t _claim_ things, Sixer. I’m speaking the plain truth. Where’s your research buddy? Gone. Did he speak to your once since he left? Nope. Where am I? Right here in your mind, trying to clear up our little misunderstanding.”

“Misunderstanding,” Ford repeated, spitting out the word like poison.

Bill rolled his eye. “Alright, fine. Might have been more of a miscommunication and hey, totally my fault. Shoulda been clearer, true - but I didn’t lie to you, smart guy. Not _once_.”

“You told me--”

“That you were gonna get answers to all your questions? Change the world? Yep! And I _meant_ it!” Bill exclaimed, circling Ford’s head. “Told you you’d have answers to your questions, and I _meant_ it! Told you that you look smashing in that coat, and I _meant_ it! Told you that tattoo looks great on ya, and I… er. Okay, _maaaaybe_ I sorta embellished the truth on that one. A little white lie, though. Well meant.”

“Whatever Fiddleford saw through that portal - whatever it was I got a glimpse of--”

“Are the makings of a better world!” Bill cut him off, reaching to ruffle Ford’s hair. “A fun world! As I said, your dimension will learn how to party! How’s that a bad thing, huh? Don’t you like partying? Wait, wait, okay, don’t answer. I know. But I betcha you’ll learn to love it! I can make you a _god_ if you just-- whoa! Rude!” Bill protested, dodging Ford’s attempt at hitting him.

Fury making it hard for him to even vocalize his fury for a few moments, Ford had to pause and draw in a deep breath before speaking. When he did, his voice shook with anger.

“What I have seen through that tear is _not_ a better world, Cipher. It is a nightmare.”

“Hey now, that isn’t nice! Okay, the guys look a bit wonky and it takes a bit to get used to it for limited minds like your own, but once your do--”

“I will _never_ activate that portal again!”

Bill’s eye narrowed. “Oh, yeah? Then how come you’re not dismantling it, IQ?” he asked, his voice suddenly colder, and Ford found himself unable to retort.

_This machine is dangerous. You'll bring about the end of the world with this. Destroy it before it destroys us all!_

“I…” he began after a few moments of silence, but Bill silenced him with a wave of his hand.

“That was a rhetorical question, smart guy. I know why you ain’t dismantling it. Your life’s work and all, right? All that your research has been leading to, the crowning achievement and so on - of course you can’t just destroy it. But you can’t keep it on standby forever either, Fordsy,” he added, and opened his eye wide. The pupil disappeared, leaving only an image of the deactivated portal. “You know what good old Chekov said, right? If you've got a gun in the plot, it's got to go off at some point. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be there. The portal is there, and it will fire up. The only question is _when_ that’s gonna happen,” he added, and something else appeared in place of the portal in his eye - a countdown.

 _Never_ , Ford thought. _I am never going to let it happen_.

“Get out of my mind,” Ford growled, trying not to let the growing sense of urgency leak through his voice, or show in his mindscape. The plate, he thought, the metal plate could be placed any moment, but it was meant to keep Cipher out. If he was _inside_ when it went in place…!

“Or else what? You’ll pout at me, like, really _really_ hard?” Bill asked, and laughed. “I’m here to stay, IQ, whether you like it or not. You _used_ to like it, though,” he added, batting his eye and causing Ford to scoff.

“I am no longer your puppet. I used to think you were a _friend_.”

“I’m the best friend you ever got, believe me,” Bill retorted. “And, unlike Fiddlesticks, I ain’t going _nowhere_.”

Ford opened his mouth to retort, but something else caught his eye - something behind Bill, above him, above _both_ of them: a darkness beyond the stars that littered the very edge of his mindscape, something blacker than night closing down around them like a dome.

The plate, he knew instantly. The metal plate was in place, and Cipher was _in_.

 _Too late_.

The realization should have filled him with despair, it truly should have. He believed it would have, if it ever came to it. Instead, slowly, he found himself smiling.

_Too late for both of us._

“... Huh, Sixer? Not that I don’t appreciate it that you grew a sense of humor all of a sudden, but that smile’s kinda creepy.”

Ford looked back at him, and his smile widened. “You know what, Bill? You’re perfectly right.”

Bill shrugged, rolling his eye. “Well, duh. Of course I was, I’m _always_ right. I--”

“You are going _nowhere_.”

Bill’s eye turned back to him. Bill’s eye stared at him for a few moments. Bill’s eye widened, and Ford had a couple of seconds to enjoy the utter bewilderment turning into comprehension and then panic before Bill Cipher turned to look up, and see what had just happened.

“What the-- no, no, no, no, NO!”

Blue flames erupted from Bill’s body, engulfing him for a few moments before fading with a sound that reminded Ford of an old, sputtering engine. His smile grew, if possible, even wider.

“You should have taken my warning and left my mind, Cipher. You should have left when there was still a way out of here. Did the All Seeing Eye _not_ see this coming?”

Bill turned to look at him, pupil blown wide in pure disbelief and something that was not too far away from horror. “What… why… what have you _done_?” he screeched, fury and fear distorting his voice. _“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?”_

Ford’s smile faded. “I’m taking you down with me. You’re not the only one who _means_ what he says, Cipher. Don’t you remember?” he added, and took a few step forward until he was only a few inches away from Bill’s eye. His pupil was still wide with shock, and Ford could see his own reflection in it when he spoke again.

_“From now until the end of time.”_


	2. Enter Stan Pines

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, inspiration did strike. Hope it’s gonna last!

“Ford? Hey, Fordsy! Are you gonna keep giving me the cold shoulder forever? At least hear me out!”

* * *

“Fooordsy, c’mon! I’ve got a brand new deal for you! Don’t wanna hear what I’ve got to offer if you just let me out?”

* * *

“Okay, okay, I get it, you’re mad. Just yell when you’re ready to listen, IQ. I’ll be here. In your mind. Not like I can go anywhere else, huh?”

* * *

“Sixer…?”

* * *

“Look, we both know that I could get out of here without your permission, Sixer. I’m just trying to be generous here and go about it the easy way, alright? Let’s talk business, how ‘bout that?”

* * *

“Stanford, this is is a mistake. You’re making a huge mistake - you have to let me out!”

* * *

“ _Let me out of here!_ I’ll give you anything! I’ll give you--”

* * *

“HELL, YOU HEAR ME? I’M GONNA GIVE YOU _HELL_ FOR THIS!”

The scream was loud enough to make his vocal chords - Ford Pines’ vocal chords - hurt, but Bill wouldn’t have cared if they tore. Would have served him right, for trapping him, thinking he could… for _daring_ to--! “Let me out of here! Damn you! LET ME OUT! YOU CANNOT KEEP ME HERE! _YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO KEEP ME HERE,_ YOU USELESS BAG OF MEAT!”

The screams echoing in the room, Bill grasped the bars of the cage with all the strength to be found in that useless body and bashed Ford’s head against them - once, twice, thrice. Pain was an explosion of unbearable whiteness, something slick and warm dripped down his - Ford’s - face, and Bill found himself on the ground, everything around him spinning. He laughed maniacally, but it was an empty laugh: harming that body gave him no satisfaction anymore, and was of even less help.

He hated, _hated_ those bars - hated how Ford had found a way to contain him even when he slept, only sleeping in a metal cage with a time lock - but of course that cage was a minor inconvenience compared to the real one, the one Stanford Pines had turned his own mind into. A cage that would only exist as long as Ford Pines himself did.

The moment he no longer did, the moment he died, that cage would be wiped from existence… along with everything in it. Everything, and _everyone_. Because if Bill Cipher was still trapped in that mind the moment Stanford Pines died, he’d be erased from existence as well. Until the end of time, Brainiac had said, but he was wrong. It would be far less than that.

_Sixty years before that heart attack. That’s nothing. The countdown has started._

_If he doesn’t die even earlier._

Panic reared up its head again, and Bill screeched. It was something he had been unused to for so long - he never had a reason to panic in a trillion years - and now it was even worse, because the human body reacted in ways his own form wouldn’t. The lungs felt constricted as though someone was squeezing them and he found himself breathing in and out, in and out, quicker and quicker, everything around him starting to blur.

“LET ME OUT! Get that plate out of your skull and let me _out_!”

This time, there was a reply - something that came deep from within Ford Pines’ mind, a voice that tired and pained but firm and unwavering.

_Never._

“I’ll… I’ll destroy this body! Destroy you! I can kill you, Stanford! Mark my words! I can--”

_Do it. Do it, and erase yourself. It does sound like the most fitting way to end for this._

Trying and failing to keep that stupid body from hyperventilating, Bill shook his head. “I-I…”

_Perhaps I should do so myself._

Over the course of a trillion years, Bill Cipher had seen plenty of bluffing. He had done plenty of bluffing, too, and as a result he could recognize a bluff from a mile away. That, he could tell,  was not one. “You wouldn’t--”

_I have weapons in the house. Even without those, I can find a way. The water tower, perhaps. A leap is all that it would take. I did fly too close to the sun, after a--_

“NO!”

_There is nothing you could do to stop me._

“You can’t… you… that was _my_ line!”

_Not much you can do about it, is there? You lost, Bill. We both have. I am fine with it. Are you?_

Bill Cipher didn’t reply: he shut his eyes and screamed again - but this time the scream was wordless, a continuous howl of fury and terror that only ceased when an alarm rang.

Ford Pines awoke in his body, the scream still in his chest, just as the cage’s time lock opened.

* * *

“Not that it’s any of my business, pal, but what on earth are you doing he--”

“None of your business - you said it.”

The words were out of his mouth before Stan could stop himself, the result of too many years on the run, and for a moment he panicked. Bad idea, that - the right kind of answer to get  the guy to just roll up the window of his truck and drive away, leaving him stranded in the snow with a broken down car that wouldn’t move another inch. Thankfully, the wind was blowing rather hard and he hadn’t speak loudly enough to be heard.

“Damn storm! Come on in, no use in yelling at each other with this wind!” the man called out, opening the truck’s passenger seat. Stan gave a sigh of relief and climbed in, throwing his bag in the back and closing the door.

“Thanks. Coulda sworn my toes were about to fall off,” he said, taking note of how big the truck driver was. Huge, really. If he decided to rob him blind - not that he had anything worth robbing on him, but the guy wouldn’t know - and leave him to freeze in a ditch, he could do so very easily. He’d turn into the world’s ugliest icycle and, at that rate, they probably wouldn’t find him until Spring.

Ah well. Sometimes you gotta risk it, Stan thought. It wasn’t like he could have stayed in the snow for much longer without freezing anyway, and besides he had to get to Ford as quickly as possible. He was in trouble, because you don’t send a message like that after over ten years if you’re _not_ in deep trouble, and Stan had hardly slept from the moment he had left New Mexico.

Obviously, his car just _had_ to give up on him only miles from his destination. That old piece of junk. Should leave it there to rust through, Stan thought, but of course he already knew he’d go back to recover it as soon as he could.

Unaware of his thoughts, the driver hummed. “Yeah, no wonder! Hellish weather - what are you even doing out here?” he asked, shifting the gears and getting the truck to move again.

“On my way to see my brother. Gravity Falls. Next town over, right?”

With a grunt Stan took as a yes, the man scratched his cheek. “Ain’t supposed to go through it, but I can drop you pretty close. What address?”

Ford’s address was written on the postcard he had sent him, but Stan didn’t need to take it from the bag to know it: he had memorized it like every other minute detail about that postcard, which had been in his hands so many times it kinda looked like someone had forgotten it in a coat and then put that coat in the washing machine. And then the dyer. And then the washing machine again.

“It’s 618 Gopher Road.”

The man nodded, eyes fixed on the windshield, where the wipers working at full speed to keep the snow and frost from coating it. “You’re lucky, then. It’s at the outskirts. I can drop you off right by with just a little diversion.”

“Great,” Stan said, and waited for the guy to add something, to tell him what the catch was - because there was a catch, right? Like, money or something for that diversion, because diversions cost gas. People don’t do anything for free, and if they do it’s bad businessmanship. But the guy said nothing more of it, so Stan could only assume he was, after all, dealing with a bad businessman. That suited him just fine, since he had no money to pay for anything anyway. “... Thanks,” he finally said after a brief silence. It still felt odd, letting that word out of his mouth. Hadn’t had many reasons to say it lately, and by ‘lately’ he meant about a decade.

A shrug. “No problem,” he said, then smiled, a flash of white in the middle of an unkempt black beard when Stan pulled down his hood. “Hey, I like your hair.”

“Huh. Thanks?” Stan muttered, wondering if that was a pass at him. But the guy just tilted his head towards a large thermos resting next to the gear.

“Got some coffee there. Help yourself and warm up.”

“Heh. Did you fall down from heaven to be my guardian angel?” Stan laughed, getting a rumbling laugh out of the guy as well. “Didn’t catch your name.”

“Tucker. Folks call me Trucker. Not very creative,” he said, and Stan grinned.

“Stan,” he said before taking a sip of coffee. Not bad - strong and bitter and very, very hot. Just what he needed. “Nice radio you’ve got there,” he added, tilting his head towards it. It was a shiny new one that Stan had been eyeing from the start, really. It had to be worth some cash… but not enough to risk that ride or the driver’s anger, so he had forced himself to ignore that thought.

“Yeah, had to save on a couple of paychecks for it, but when it’s your only company on the job it’s worth it. Driving’s kinda boring without music, you know?”

Stan, who’d had to sell his own car’s radio a couple of years earlier, could only agree. “True.”

“So, music?”

“Yeah, sure. Why not?” Stan said, finally starting to feel a bit more like a human being. He was warming up, the guy seemed at least friendly and really, getting to listen to music from a good radio that wouldn’t frizzle up and die on him was kind of a treat.

 _The road is long_   
_With many a winding turns_   
_That leads us to who knows where_ _  
_ _Who knows where..._

… Alright, maybe the fact Tucker decided to start singing along after a few moments kinda took away some of the charm, but hey, it was still a pretty sweet deal and, more importantly, he’d be at Ford’s place soon. That was all that mattered.

Stan rested more comfortably on the seat, glanced at the show and trees through the windshield, and just listened in silence. Focused as he was on getting there to begin with, he hadn’t yet started to wonder, _truly_ wonder, what was it Ford needed him for so urgently.

PLEASE COME, after over ten years of silence. It had to be serious - it had to be _trouble._ But hey, he had turned to the right guy: when it came to trouble, Stan was an expert. Whatever it was, they could talk it through and find a solution: the two of them could take on anything as long as they stuck together. That was how it had been for most of their lives, anyway, before their stupid fight.

Stanley Pines refused to believe that may have changed.

 _But I'm strong, strong enough to carry him_   
_He ain't heavy, he's my brother_   
_So on we go_   
_His welfare is of my concern_   
_No burden is he to bear_ _  
We'll get there..._

* * *

The bottle of alcohol was almost empty, Ford noted when he pulled it out from under the bathroom sink. He should buy more, he thought somewhat absentmindedly, throwing aside the towel he had used to wipe the blood off his face.

The wounds Bill had caused him by bashing his head against the metal bars were nothing too serious - a split eyebrow, some bruising on his forehead - but he could have done without the blood loss. It made him dizzy, and dizziness made him more likely to fall asleep or lose consciousness. He couldn’t do either. He couldn’t _afford_ doing either, not out of the cage's confines.

But at least pain would keep him awake, he thought, and poured alcohol on the split eyebrow. It was like a jolt and he bit his lip, trying to hold back a scream, but it did clear his mind some, enough for him to focus on stitching the wound. It would probably prove useless, because Bill had reopened wounds several time when he took possession of his body on Ford’s rare bouts of sleep, but he couldn’t leave it open to bleed.

After he was done, he threw some water on his face and put his glasses back on. The sink had blood in it, as did the bathroom’s mirror, but he felt too drained to pay that any mind. He just stared at himself in the mirror - his hair was barely starting to grow back in patches after the operation, and along with the stubble, pale skin and sunken-in eyes it made him look more like a corpse than a living being.

“One of the Undead,” Ford told the mirror, and his cracked lips curled in a bitter smile. “Heh. I wonder if a perfect three-part harmony would shatter my skull right now. It just might. Shame cinnamon and formaldehyde cannot cure _this_ sickness.”

He was supposed to rest during his recovery from surgery, but how could he? How could he rest if closing his eyes meant having to see that monster inhabiting his mind, or surrendering him his body? He couldn’t. The truth was that there could be no rest for him until Bill was gone, and for Bill to be gone… well. Perhaps he should make that leap, after all. It needn’t be the water tower: if he just went upstairs, to the window leading to the roof…

A sudden noise snapped him from his morbid thoughts and caused him to turn away from the mirror, a noise it took him a moment to place: a knock, then another, and another. Someone at the door, he realized - but who could that be, with that storm raging outside?

_One of the Undead, perhaps. A very polite one, knocking to be allowed in and eat my brain with Bill in it._

The thought was so absurd that it made Ford laugh; a consequence of the fatigue and blood loss, he supposed. He was still chuckling when he reached the door, his feet shuffling a little, and opened it - only to find himself staring at his own face.

_What…?_

Realization kicked him after a couple of moments, through the veil of fatigue and confusion. That was not his own face - it was one he hadn’t seen in over ten years… and yet one he had been seeing every morning in the mirror.

“... Stanley?”

* * *

_“Stanford?”_

Just speaking his brother’s name was enough to leave Stan short of breath, as though someone had just punched it out of him along with all air in his lungs. After over ten years and knowing Ford had to be in some kind of trouble, he had expected to be surprised - but one thing he hadn’t doubted for a second was that he’d recognize his brother right away. How could he not? They had the same face, after all.

Except they didn’t. Stan may not be at his best at the moment - hair aside, he was underfed and hadn’t slept enough in a while - but Ford was a _ruin._ His hair looked all the world like it had been shaven off and had just started to grow back in patches; there was a fresh scar on his head that the growth couldn’t quite hide. His cheeks were covered in stubble and sunken in, as were his bloodshot eyes.  His forehead above the left eye was swollen, the edges of a wound badly stitched back together, and there were bruises at various stages of healing on the rest of his face, too. And, despite the layers of clothing he was wearing, Stan could tell he was much, much thinner than he should be.

“... Stanley,” Ford repeated slowly, before Stan could recover enough to ask what the hell had _happened_ to him. It sounded as though he was having trouble recollecting something. Then, after a brief pause, he nodded. “The postcard,” he said. “I forgot. You received it.”

“I-I… yes,” Stan found himself saying numbly. The storm was still howling around him, the porch giving him shelter from the show but not from the icy wind, and yet he no longer felt cold. He felt nothing. “I came… as quickly as I could. Stanford, what…?”

Stanford’s cracked lips curled into a smile that did not reach his eyes. “Not quickly enough, I fear.”

A cold, cold hand gripped Stan’s insides.

_He’s sick, isn’t he? He has to be. That is a surgery scar. Is he dying? I should have come quicker - I shouldn’t have taken that turn for Alberqueque - I shouldn’t have…!_

Dread threatening to choke him, Stan forced himself to ignore the thoughts going through his mind. “Why aren’t you in a hospital?” he found himself saying.

Ford’s smile faded. “They cannot help me. But you might,” he said, and stepped back. His steps were unsteady, and he leaned against the wall. “Come in.”

Stan stepped inside, closing the door behind himself, and let the bag drop on the floor. The room was filled with strange things and, he noted, several empty bottles, but he hardly spared any of it a look: all his attention was on his brother. “Is this for some kinda transplant?”

The question caused Stanford to blink at him in utter confusion. “... Transplant?”

“Yeah, for whatever… I mean, that’s surgery, ain’t it?” he asked, gesturing towards Ford’s head. “Something’s wrong and… I mean, I don’t know about the medical mumbo jumbo, I gotta be compatible, right? Twins and all. That’s why you sent for me, right?”

Comprehension dawned on Ford’s devastated face. “Stan, this isn’t--”

“Well, you’re in luck!” Stan blurted out, and grinned. “Got plenty of sorta-kinda-new stuff! So, waddayaneed? Got plenty of blood, bone marrow and hey, good thing I didn’t sell that kidney last month, huh?” he laughed, lifting his hands to point at himself with both thumbs. “So I’ve got a spare one! Good as new! No refunds but hey, you’re gettin’ it for free!”

“Stanley…”

“And hey, the liver grows back, right? So there’s that, too. And I need a haircut anyway, so if you’d like a wig until your hair grows back as we--”

_“Stanley.”_

The sudden sharp edge in Ford’s voice caused Stan to trail off, and the smile to immediately fade. He was staring at him with those sunken in eyes, his mouth set in a grim line.

“... Isn’t it… isn’t that what you need?”

“No. Stanley, there is nothing you can do to help me. It is too late. I sent for you too late. But there is one thing you can do,” he added, and reached to grab Stan’s sleeve. His grip was weak, and yet it was clearly taking him an effort to keep it steady. “There is no one else I can turn to. Please, Stanley. I need you to listen to me and do precisely as I say. Can you do that?”

Anything, Stan wanted to say, but his mouth was dry as a desert, and he could only nod. Ford’s grim expression softened in what was almost a smile.

“Good. I need you to take this,” he said, his free hand reaching under his coat and pulling out something - some sort of book with a golden, six-fingered hand on its cover. He pushed it in Stan’s hand. “Take this, and leave.”

“Sure, no problem. Take this and-- wait, what?”

Ford’s grip on his arm tightened. “ _Leave._ Go as far away as you can. To the edge of Earth, if necessary. Where no one will find it. I will provide you with money,” he added, and laughed. “I doubt I’ll be needing it for much longer.”

“I… what the… what about you?” Stan protested, a sense of irreality mixing with what wasn’t too far away from horror. What was happening to his brother? He had worried about his health - still did - but now he wondered about his sanity, too.

“As I said, you can no longer help me. I have made mistakes, Stan. Too many of them.”

Well, Stan had sort of guessed by then: he had enough experience to recognize Fucked Up Big Time when he saw it. Only that he got the distinct feeling that Stanford had fucked up a whole lot worse than Stan ever had, and that was saying as _lot._

“Well, we’re gonna fix ‘em,” Stan snapped, and put the journal down, on the nearest flat surface available. “Tell me what happened and--”

“I will _not_ drag you into this,” Ford cut him off, and the forceful statement seemed to take what was left of his strength. He let go of Stan’s sleeve and took a step back - a staggering one. “The less you know, the better it is. Leave me, Stanley. There is so much more at stake than my life. Take that journal and--”

“If you think I’m going anywhere, you’re crazy,” Stan snapped, causing Ford to fall silent. “You look like you’ve got one foot in the grave and I ain’t leavin’ you like this. Don’t care about the _stakes,_ Ford. If you wanna see me out of that door, you’re gonna have to shove me through it and-- hey! Did you just _shove_ me?”

 _“You hopeless imbecile!”_ Ford screamed, giving him another shove. Fury twisted his features, and it seemed to have galvanized him. “For once in your life - just _once_ \- do the right thing!”

“But--”

“You cannot imagine what I’m up against, Stanley! I cannot fight it _and_ your idiocy at the same time!” Ford snapped. He took the journal from the table Stan had left it on and slammed it against his chest. “Take this journal and go! Take it… take it somewhere…” Ford faltered, stepping back, all color draining from his already pale face. Before Stan could say anything or react in any way, he staggered and sank on his knees.

“H-hey! Stanford! You all right? Stanford!” Stan dropped the journal and knelt before his brother, catching him just on time before he fell face first on the floor. “Dammit, we gotta take you to the hospital! Is your car working? I can--”

“No,” Ford managed, shaking his head. He was on the floor now, head cradled in Stan’s arms. His gaze was dim, but he was struggling to keep his eyes open, and his voice was laced with fear. “No, no hospital, I… I… Stanley, help me. I cannot pass out, not here! There is… upstairs, you’ve got to take me upstairs, there’s a… there is…” his voice faded and he closed his eyes before going limp in his arms.

For a moment, Stanley Pines could have sworn he had felt his heart coming to a grinding halt in his chest. He immediately reached to press his fingers on Ford’s neck, and breathed out a long sigh of relief when he felt a pulse. “... Whew. All right, Poindexter, this is it,” Stan muttered, shifting him so he could pick him up. “We’re going to a hospital and--”

“Weeeeell. Ain’t it the dumb, sweaty twin.”

“Huh?”

It took him a moment to realize that voice had come from Ford because really, it sounded nothing like him. Tired and weak, yes, but still not his voice. Stan looked down to see Ford’s eyes were open, and staring up at him.

… Were those _his_ eyes? Were they really? There was something about them that was different, something that made the hair on his neck stand on end. That, and the unhinged smile. Stan frowned. “Seriously? I’m not even sweaty! There’s a snowstorm going o--”

“Aaand no cage,” Stanford muttered, cutting him off. “How nice. Thank you for messing up yet again. Good old Stanley. That’s what you do best, ain’t it?”

Stan’s frown turned into a scowl, but he didn’t let go of his brother. “Ya know what, I’m gonna pretend I didn’t hear that. We’re going to the hospital and--”

“You ain’t taking me nowhere, Mullet. I’ve got someplace to be and it ain’t a hospital. Get your hands off me,” Ford snapped, and twisted away from his grip. Stan blinked, staring in surprise as Stanford climbed on his feet - slowly and with what was clearly a lot of effort, but he stood. Stan stood as well, reaching to put a hand on his shoulder.

“Look, you’re gonna fall if you--”

“I told you to get your hands off me, you dumb, three-dimensional skin puppet!” Ford snarled, and gave him a shove, causing both Stan and himself to topple backwards. Stan regained balance with a couple of steps back, while Ford… didn’t.

_Crash._

“Ouch! This… this… this useless bag of BONES! I’m gonna… I… I’m...”

Something about Ford’s screech was more terrifying than the thud his head had made when it hit the floor, but the way his voice - was it his own? - got weaker a moment later was the worst. Stan rushed by his brother’s side once more. “Look, you’re not well, okay? You need to-- hey, no, don’t pass out again…! Oh, c’mon!”

Of course, he had passed out. Ah well. Maybe it was for the best: it would allow him to take him to a hospital without fuss. He’d just need to find the keys to Ford’s car and--

“... Stanely?”

_Whoa, awake again?_

“Hey, Poindexter,” Stanley said, and forced himself to smile. “Can’t stay awake and can’t stay asleep, huh?”

“My head spins. Did he… did I… do something?” Ford managed, trying and failing to lift himself. Stan helped him sit up and lean on him, sitting cross-legged on the floor. Ford’s head rested against his shoulder, and he felt him taking a deep breath.

“Well, you tried to walk off to somewhere. Didn’t get further than, say, five feet?”

Another deep breath, or maybe it was a sigh of relief. “Good,” Ford muttered. “Did I say anything that sounded… odd?”

Stan couldn’t hold back a laugh. “Are you kidding me? You’ve been spewing odd stuff from the moment I walked in, Poindexter. You need to sleep.”

“No. No, I… I simply felt dizzy. I’ll be fine. Just… don’t let me fall asleep.”

“What?”

A six-fingered hand gripped his coat. “Please, Stanley. Do as I say. Don’t allow me to fall asleep until I am strong enough to stand up and… and…what’s this smell?”

“Er… I think that’s me. Didn’t shower in a bit, come to think of it,” Stan admitted, choosing not to mention that Stanford smelled like an old distillery himself. If he was to keep him awake, fine - but he wouldn’t do it by arguing with him. One thing at time, he decided. “Huh… so, hey. Remember the hunt for the Jersey Devil?”

“... I do. I think… I think I still have the reel, somewhere.”

“You do?” Stan blurted out, taken aback, and smiling came a bit easier. “Hey, great. How ‘bout we watch that? I mean, who _could_ fall asleep watching the adventures the Stanventurers?”

There was a sound that Stan could have sworn sounded almost like a chuckle. “That pun was simply atrocious.”

“Pffft, as if. You’re just jealous ‘cause you ain’t the one who came up with it. Look, let’s get on the couch, okay? Lean on me - can you stand up?”

He could.

* * *

“Well, well. Look at that. Such a moving scene. Is someone cutting onions here?”

Of course, no one was cutting onions, because he was the only one in that mindscape quickly falling into ruin and shrouded in fog. Or maybe someone was, somewhere in Stanford Pines’ memories - like that one memory of Ma Pines cooking some pretty great pancakes Bill had helped himself to. Hey, he was trapped and getting pretty desperate to get out before Ford Pines’ pathetic life ended one way or another. May as well enjoy the small perks.

“Stan Pines,” Bill muttered, and let his eye roll back, taking a look at all he knew about him, all he had learned through Ford’s memories. That, along with the vomit-inducing scene he had just witnessed, told him enough. It told him everything he needed to know.

“A well-intentioned idiot,” Bill said, and laughed. It echoed in the fog, unhinged, his first real laugh in a while. “Oooh, and I _love_ well-intentioned idiots,” he added, and he meant it, he truly did.

They were so wonderfully, wonderfully _useful._


	3. Trust No One

“This is my room. There… there is no need for you to come in. I’ll be fine.”

“You sure? I can--”

“No. It’s alright.There is a guest room, right over there. It hasn’t been used in a while, but it should be clean enough to stay in. I think.”

“Hey, can’t be worse than a Colombian prison cell. Bet I’ll be just fine.”

“... Did I just hear you saying what I think I heard you--”

“We’ll, huh. Talk about it tomorrow. So, you sure you don’t need help?”

Ford shook his head, reaching for the handle of his bedroom’s door. He knew that if Stanley got even a glimpse of the cage he slept into he’d have questions - lots of them - and he simply didn’t have the strength to give him answers just yet. He needed rest and then… then he’d see. 

“I’m fine. Goodnight, Stanley.”

Had he been less exhausted, perhaps Ford would have noticed how natural the words still came to his lips after so many years without uttering them. Had he turned, he’d have seen his brother’s worried frown fade and his face light up like a Christmas tree.

“Goodnight, Stanford.”

* * *

“Aww, how sweet. I think I’m gonna puke.”

“How  _ would  _ you even puke?” 

“Yeah, you ain’t got a mouth.”

“Hey, shouldn’t you be sleeping and-- get that flashlight outta my eye, Sixer!” Bill snapped. The flashlight was switched off, and two children could be heard snickering in the dark. Alright, so maybe he hadn’t picked the best memory to stay in while focusing on the next step of his plan - which actually consisted in coming up with one - but it was the first door he’d come across in the fog that still enveloped Ford’s mind. His struggle to keep him as disoriented as possible and away from any relevant information he might hold was effective as it was annoying.

“It’s useless anyway. You’re never gonna win,” Stanley Pines said somewhere in the darkness. “The older us are going to kick your a--”

“Stanley!”

“Whaa-aat? Dad’s not here to hear me!”

“Still! And… and he doesn’t even have one, anyway.”

“Oh, right. He has… angles?”

“I’m not hearing this conversation,” Bill snorted, pressing a hand against his eye and fervently wishing he had the power to pulverize those two. He could do it - had done so several times, really, which had been rather therapeutic - but, being memories and all, they just respawned after moments. Having complete access to Stanford Pines’ mind didn’t mean he could permanently  _ change  _ anything in it. 

Now he wished he had added that to the deal, but it wasn’t like he had thought he’d need to sooner or later; good old Fordsy had blindsided him. Some All Seeing Eye. If that frilly pink monstrosity - or worse yet that damn baby - ever found out, then he and the rest of the Multiverse would  _ never _ hear the end of it.

Of course, that would mean he had made it out of there, so the prospect wasn’t too bad. He’d take the mockery over being erased from existence any day - especially since he had the power to make the mockery  _ end, _ if so he wanted. 

But first, he had to get out of that mess and Stanley Pines was probably his best bet. Once he learned what had happened, the big idiot would probably be  _ desperate _ to get that plate out of his brother’s skull and free him of Bill’s presence, whether good old Fordsy wanted it or not.

He needed a little push, that was all. He just needed to see just how  _ bad _ it could get, and then--

“FIRE!”

_ Snap. _

“Ow!”

“Gotcha!”

“What was  _ that _ for?” Bill snapped, and had only a moment to regret it before the obvious answers began pouring in. 

“You tricked Stanford!”

“And now you’re hurting me! I mean, him! I mean-- you know!”

“And you’re planning something! I can tell,” Stanley Pines, eight years old, said. He waved his hands, causing the flashlight to shine across the room. “You were doing that thing with your fingers! The… huh…”

“Finger Pyramid of Evil Contemplation,” Stanford supplied.

“Yeah, that! Not that you need to. You already are a pyramid of evil!”

“I’m a triangle, kid.”

“What’s the difference?”

Little Stanford immediately began explaining him the difference, but Bill ignored both, reaching up to rub his eye. “What was  _ that, _ anyway?”

“A rubber band! I know it hurts because I snapped it on my face, too! Lots of times!”

“Alright, that’s it. I’m outta this memory,” Bill grumbled, lifting himself off the floor. Let that stupid kid gloat all he wanted: it was  _ adult _ Stanley he needed to swindle, and he had all the leverage he needed to do so. He may be a prisoner, sure, but now so was Stanford.

And Stanley Pines would do  _ anything _ for his brother.

* * *

For the first time in weeks, Stanford Pines awoke from a full night’s sleep. 

He found himself staring at the cage’s ceiling in stunned silence, trying to wrap his mind around the fact that he felt no pain except from the soreness in his muscles that had become a constant companion. No marks had been scratched on his face, and everything seemed to indicate his head had not been bashed against the bars. His body had just  _ slept, _ along with him.

It should have been a relief, but of course he could know no such thing with Bill still around. 

“What are you up to?” Ford asked aloud, receiving no reply. Bill remained silent in the back of his mind - waiting, watching, but silent. And he must have been silent through the night, too, or else Stanley would have probably heard him screaming and tried to barge in despite the bolt at the door. There was no way he could have opened the cage - it was solid, as was the time lock - but the thought was enough to give him the chills: had a such thing happened, Stanley would have had no idea the one he was dealing with wasn’t Ford at all. 

_ He should know, _ he thought.  _ If I cannot make him leave, then he should know. And perhaps he will leave once he does. He must. He must take that cursed journal and-- _

Ford was snapped from his thoughts by the alarm meant to awaken him went off. Moments later, a buzzing could be heard as the time lock on the cage opened to let him out. Ford stood, letting out a slight groan when his back protested, but after a long hot shower even that felt better. Ford gave his face a quick look in the foggy mirror - no, no new marks, and the cut on his eyebrow seemed to be healing reasonably well - before opening the door to leave the bathroom and--

The scent hit him like a blow, familiar and unfamiliar at the same time and laced with more nostalgia than he thought he could possibly feel, making his stomach growl and clench at the same time. 

_ Stancakes. _

* * *

“Don’t mind if I help myself, right, Mrs. P?”

“I guess not, dear. Stanford, Stanley, is he your classmate?”

“No!”

“He’s not our friend! He’s an evil triangle!”

“I thought maybe you met him in the geometry class…”

Bill shrugged, shoving a forkful of pancakes in his mouth before turning it back into an eye. He ignored the two kids at the kitchen table - and the other adult with the newspaper firmly planted in front of his face - to give a one-eyed wink towards Ma Pines. “Your pancakes are great, Mrs. P. Not as much as you, but hey. Close enough.”

That caused her to chuckle. “Aww, what a sweetie!”

“Bleagh! Is he making a pass at our mom?”

“Mom! He’s evil! The enemy!”

“But he’s  _ so _ polite!”

Bill left them to their banter and just grabbed the plate with the pancakes before hovering towards the door leading out of that particular memory. 

“I’m not impressed,” Filbrick Pines informed him, not looking up from his newspaper.

“Makes two of us, buddy,” Bill told him before closing the door behind himself. The fog throughout Stanford’s mindscape was still thick, but it didn’t really matter: he had pancakes and what he wanted to see wasn’t in there anyway. 

Bill Cipher sat down, ate another forkful, and began looking through Stanford Pines’ eyes.

* * *

“More Stancakes coming up!”

Ford managed to give something that sounded reasonably like a laugh, leaning back on the chair and resting a hand on his stomach. “Stanley, I believe I’ve had enou--”

“Nope,” Stan cut him off, dropping another pile of Stancakes on his plate, oozing with maple syrup. Another pile went on his own plate, and he began wolfing them down. “Took me forever to find the right ingredients, but there was cinnamon everywhere. What do you  _ do _ with it?”

_ A cure for those bitten by the Undead _ would have been the right answer, but Stanford just let out a sigh and resigned himself to finishing up the huge pile of Stancakes in front of him. Which, truth be told, was… not the most unpleasant task he’d had to go through. “... They’re just like mom’s,” he said in the end. 

“Yup! Learned from the best and all! I mean, I can only cook one thing, but hey. I can do it  _ real _ well,” Stanley said, swallowing the last bite and leaning back. “So, huh. This place sure is… filled with odd stuff,” he finally said, this time sounding rather awkward. Ford had grown so accustomed to the oddities of that town that it took him a few moments to realize his brother was referring to the various items scattered around the house - every single one of them unlike anything recognized by official science.

“I take it you’ve been taking a look around,” he said quietly. Not too long ago the intrusion would have felt unbearable, but now he found it did not matter… as long as some things were left undisturbed. “Have you been in the basement?”

“You have a basement?”

Ford breathed a little more easily. So, he hadn’t found the entrance. That was good. “Nevermind,” he said, and swallowed the last bite of Stancake. 

“Feeling better? Did my cooking work its magic?” he heard Stanley asking, a hopeful note in his voice. Ford opened his mouth to tell him that he was fine, that he need not worry about anything but taking the journal and leave - but then he watched his brother’s grin fading into concern, and he found himself unable to. Not in those terms, at least. 

“The easiest way out of this,” he finally said slowly, “would be doing as I told you to do yesterday. Take that journal and go as far away from me as possible.”

Stanley scoffed. “Yeah, not happening. Since when do I take the easy way out, anyway?”

“... Since always, really.”

That caused his brother to cross his arms somewhat defensively. “Fine,  _ fine. _ But not this time, I’m not. You need help, Stanford. That’s obvious and I ain’t going nowhere leaving you like that.”

_ I’m the best friend you ever got, believe me. And, unlike Fiddlesticks, I ain’t going nowhere. _

Ford glanced down at the empty dish in front of him, and pushed it away. “I may be in need of help, yes. Whether I  _ deserve _ the kind of help you’re offering, though, is up for debate,” he said, and raised his gaze to meet Stanley’s with some effort. “I have made mistakes, Stanley. Terrible ones. As things stand, the choice is between my own well-being and the lives of billions.”

Stanley laughed. 

“Hahaha! Good one, Sixer! Sheesh, you got some serious acting skills there! Look, I may have believed that thing about the Bee People back in third grade, but that doesn’t mean you can… just… pull my. Leg?” The last word came out of as a question, the laughter having died down before Ford’s impassable expression. Stan stared at him for a moment, confusion plain on his face, then cleared his throat. “You…  _ are _ pulling my leg, right? Right?”

Stanford sighed. “I wish I were, Stanley,” he said, his voice bitter. “But no. I am not. I suppose it is not enough to convince you to take the journal and leave?”

Stanley’s stunned expression changed into a scowl. “You  _ bet _ it isn’t. This is the time to help out, if anything.”

“I am far beyond help.”

“Well, try me. Tell me what’s going on.”

“I…” Ford began, only for his throat to close up and his voice to die out. All of a sudden, he found himself unable to stand Stanley’s gaze. He looked away, trying to battle the wave of shame that had pervaded him. Stanley would think him such a fool, and he would be right, because he  _ had been _ a fool - willfully blind despite all the signs, despite all the warnings, despite the friend he lost along the way. 

_ Be there or be left behind, _ he had told him. What a fool he had been! He was his only true friend, had tried to warn him, and Stanford had suspected  _ him _ of all people to be capable of backstabbing. And all because he had heeded Bill’s words and flattery over anything else!

_ I was a puppet. My Muse was a monster. _

And now that monster was within his own mind, where he would have to remain for the sake of everybody else on Earth - everybody else in that  _ dimension.  _ How many lives had Ford truly put in danger? He feared he could never know. No, he  _ hoped _ he would never know. 

“It is… a long story,” he found himself saying. 

Stanley shrugged, and reached for a bottle of brandy that had been left on the table hell knew when. He poured a generous fill in two glasses, slid one over to Ford across the table and took the other in his hand. 

“I’ve got time, Poindexter.”

And it was a good thing he did, because explaining him everything - or, at least, everything worth knowing about that whole sorry mess - took a good chunk of the morning. Stan listened and, while he never interrupted, his incredulity was palpable at first. Then even that faded into a completely impassable expression… but the level of alcohol in his glass and eventually in the bottle kept steadily decreasing the further Ford went on with his tale. By the time it was nearing the end, they were both empty and Stanley was staring at him in complete silence.

“... And that is why I meant to ask you to take that journal well away from here. I… had not expected Bill to become trapped in when I sent for you, but in the end that changed little. The other two journals are already hidden, but for the sake of everyone-- Stanley, what are you doing?”

Stanley said nothing for a couple of moments, his hands still pressed against Ford’s forehead and leaning across the table, then, “... You do feel kinda warm.”

_ Wait. What? _

“What-- do you think I have fever?”

“Look, it ain’t something to be ashamed about - I mean, you did have surgery and didn’t sleep much, so-- hey!” Stanley yelped when Ford slapped his hand away. 

“Are you implying I have  _ hallucinated  _ everything?” he snapped. “That I’m going insane? That it was all in my mind?”

His brother opened his mouth and for a moment he seemed about to deny it, then he frowned and set his jaw. “Look, I don’t mean… you gotta admit this sounds crazy! A portal to another dimension and a  _ dream demon called Bill _ stuck in your brain? I shared a cell with a meth addict and I’ve got to say even the crap he said made more sense--”

Ford stood suddenly, causing the chair to fall back with a bang on the kitchen floor. Anger replaced the shame, hot and cold at the same time, but he did keep his voice even, gripping the edge of the table with both hands. “Very well. I’ll show you something. Proof, if you will,” he added, and turned. “Follow me.”

* * *

“The  _ hell _ is this?”

“The portal, obviously. Were you not paying attention?”

“So it’s  _ really _ a thing?”

“Are you convinced now?”

Alright, Stan thought, so maybe Stanford hadn’t hallucinated  _ all _ of it. To be totally honest, that about a portal to other dimensions was the part of his tale he had the least trouble believing - which said a lot about how absurd the whole thing sounded, really. Come on, a triangle demon pretending to be a muse who was now stuck in Ford’s head thanks to a metal plate, and who possessed him in his sleep? That was crazy talk, all of it. 

… Besides, what kind of demon would call himself  _ Bill,  _ anyway? One would have expected something more impressive than that, like Mephistopheles or Beelzebub or whatever, not one that may very well belong to store clerk or an accountant. 

“Okay,” Stan finally said, lifting his arms. “So, there really is a portal. If you turned it on--”

“It must never be turned on,” Stanford cut him off, reaching to grasp his shoulders. For someone looking so frail, his grip was surprisingly firm. “ _ Never, _ Stanley.”

“Right, right,” Stan said quickly, eager to get that sudden look of horror off his brother’s face. “Won’t turn it on. I was just thinking aloud.”

Stanford seemed to relax a fraction, but did not let go of Stan’s shoulders. “Bill wants nothing more than reopening this passage, and he cannot be allowed to succeed. That is why he tries to control my body, Stanley. I cannot allow him to walk freely knowing he may come down here and… and reactivate the portal.”

_ Then why don’t you destroy it?,  _ Stan thought, and almost said it, but Stanford spoke again before he could. 

“He is trapped in my mind as things are, but he can leave if I give him permission or the plate is removed. If… whatever nightmares live in his dimension pour into ours, he can get them to remove the plate, or blackmail me into releasing him,” he said, and let go of Stan to reach up for his head, fingers brushing against the scar. “I think… I think the second option would be more likely. Removing the plate wouldn’t be simple and might very well kill me if not done right. And if  _ I _ die, so does he - erased with the rest of my mind,” he added, and gave a bitter laugh. “It might be the best solution to all of this, really.”

“Yeeeah, how ‘bout no?” Stan said, refusing to take what Stanford had just said seriously. Sure, he may be convinced he had a demon named Bill stuck in his head, but he couldn’t possibly be really thinking that his death would be for the best. He simply couldn’t. “You’re not gonna die on my watch, Poindexter.”

“There should be no  _ watch _ from your part, Stanley. You cannot help me and I never expected you to. But if you take the journal--”

“Nice try, but no,” Stan cut him off. “Look, you’re in trouble, right? So I’m not moving from here.”

“The journal--”

“I’ll hide it someplace, okay? Won’t tell you where, so this Bill guy won’t know. But then I’ll be coming straight back here, whether you want it or not. I can pick locks,” Stan added before Stanford could protest, and as a result his brother gave a noise that was halfway between a sigh and a chuckle. 

“You’re just as pig-headed as I remembered.”

“Thanks. You too,” Stan said lightly, and turned to the door. “Look, can we get outta here? This place is giving me the creeps.”

For a few moments, Stanford said nothing: he just let his gaze wander across the room and at the portal before finally turning away and nodding. “... Yes. Let’s go back upstairs. If you’re going to stay, there are more things you need to know.”

* * *

“And most importantly,  _ trust no one. _ ”

“Alright.”

_ “No one.” _

“I got it, I got it! Sheesh! Do you think I made it to today alive by trusting people, anyway?”

“I mean it, Stan. This town is… there is so much going on. If you see this symbol, for example, you should beware,” Stanford said, sketching the Blind Eye on a piece of paper on the kitchen table. “I still do not know what their aim is, but I suspect it is Fiddleford’s work.”

“Your assistant?”

“Yes. I searched for him after Bill revealed his true colors, but I couldn’t find him.”

“If it’s really him, wouldn’t that be good news? I mean, the guy didn’t want you to keep working on the portal, right?”

_ And I should have listened to him, _ Ford thought, but he just nodded. 

“That is true. However, until we know what is it they’re trying to accomplish and what the Blind Eye means, it’s best to keep away from them. Trust  _ no one, _ Stanley.”

“Except  _ you,  _ right?”

Ford couldn’t hold back a bitter smile. “Fiddleford trusted me, and look how  _ that _ turned out.”

“Hey, we’re gonna fix this, alright? We’ll fix everything,” Stanley said - and, while he did not believe it for a moment, Ford found that it did him good to hear it.  Still, he didn’t remark on it and drew something else - yellow eyes with a slit pupil.

“I suppose you can trust me not to deceive you, if anything, but not always. Not when it’s not me,” he said, and pushed the paper closer to Stanley. “Does this look familiar?”

Stanley frowned, staring at it for a few moments, and Ford could see his eyes widening before he spoke. “Hey, that’s… that’s kinda what your eyes looked like yesterday, after you passed out the first time,” he said, clearly taken aback. “I thought something was wrong with ‘em, but I couldn’t tell what it was. Kinda like a cat, huh?”

So, he had noticed. That was good: it would make things easier. “That is what the eyes of someone possessed by Bill look like,” he explained. “It is quite the telltale sign once you know what to look for. To be entirely sure, you should shine a light in my eyes and observe my pupils closely. If they’re anything like this, then Bill is possessing me. There is also an enchantment that reveals what people have been possessed by Bill recently, but there will be no use for that. He is trapped in my mind, unable to possess anyone but me.”

Stanley nodded. “Oookay. And he can do that any time?”

“No. He can take control of my body only if I either allow him or fall asleep, or otherwise unconscious. I am  _ never _ allowing him to possess me ever again, so that narrows his options by far. That is why I sleep in a cage with a time lock; it is the only way for me to get any rest and still keep him contained. 

“You sleep  _ where _ ?”

“It is the only way, Stanley. It is better than no sleep at all,” Stanford said, faintly wondering how Stanley would react if he knew how seriously he had been considering suicide… and how that still wasn’t entirely out of question. “Of course, Bill doesn’t take it kindly to finding himself trapped on his plane of existence as well. The marks you can see on me are, it goes without saying, entirely his doing. Last night was… peaceful, I suppose. It’s not normally so.”

Stanley’s eyes darted to Ford’s forehead, pausing on his eyebrow, before he nodded. “... A dangerous guy, huh?”

“You have no idea, Stanley. This is nothing compared what he could do if unleashed upon this world, and very little compared to what he would do to me if he didn’t know he cannot end me without ending himself,” Stanford said, and sighed, reaching up to rub his eyes. “He will try to trick you, no doubt. He’ll try to talk you into letting him out, most likely by pretending to be me. Never attempt to let me out of that cage before the time lock opens, Stanley. I will never ask you to do a such thing. Is that clear?”

“Yeah. Crystal.”

“No matter what he may threaten or do to my body either, Stanley -  _ never _ let him out.”

“But if you-- I mean, if he--”

_ “Never!” _

“Okay, okay!” Stanley said quickly, lifting his arms. “Won’t do it.”

“And if you’re ever in doubt, in  _ any _ doubt, check my eyes. Check my pupils, and you will know,” he added, then slid one more thing towards Stanley - a wooden box with his journal inside. “The journal is in here. If you won’t leave with it, I cannot make you - in that case, I want you to hide it. In the forest, the lake, wherever you’d like as long as it’s hard to find and you never tell me where it is.”

Stanley frowned down at the box, then nodded and reached to take it. “Alright. Will hide it someplace and be right back, okay? Don’t let this Bill guy in while I’m away.”

Ford smiled weakly. “I do not plan on falling asleep,” he said. “Now go. And, Stanley?”

“Yeah?”

“Make sure no one sees or follows you. Speak to nobody. And most of all--”

“Trust no one,” Stanley cut him off, turning to leave. “I got it the first eight times.”

“... Stanley,” Ford called out after his brother’s retreating back, and he stopped in his tracks, only a couple of feet away from the door. He didn’t turn, but Ford could see his back tensing as he waited for him to speak again… and so he did. “It would be best for you if you leave.”

For a moment, his words were met with silence; then, finally, Stanley shrugged without turning. “I’m the dumb twin, Sixer. I don’t know what’s _best_ for me. But I know I’m exactly where I’ve got to be,” he said, and left, closing the door behind himself.

Stanford Pines found himself staring at it for a long, long time.

* * *

“What a goddamn  _ mess. _ ”

Stan’s words came out as a groan, the cold making the puffs of breath leaving his mouth as visible as his own footprints in the snow. It was damn cold, really, but he was unable to really feel it; all he could focus on was Stanford, and how his sanity had clearly taken a nosedive for the worst. 

He wasn’t lying to him, Stan was sure of it; he believed every single word he had told him and hey, maybe some of that stuff was real. The portal was definitely there, and it sure didn’t look like just some kind of complex movie prop - but that whole demonic possession stuff… well, it was something else entirely. 

Split personality or something, Stan thought. That was it, it had to be it. It would explain everything, wouldn’t it? The way Ford’s personality had just changed after passing out, and how he wouldn’t remember what he had said or done afterwards. The poor sucker had been on his own for too long, that was it, and when he had developed that kind of disorder he had just… thought it to be a demon or something. Sure he had. It was the only explanation that made  _ sense:  _ a second personality his brother had called Bill. 

_ So what now? I call 911? _

But that was not an option, of course. Stan may be no science expert - hadn’t even graduated from high school - but it didn’t take a PhD to guess the stuff he had seen in Stanford’s basement had to be fifty different kinds of illegal. A 911 call would result with his brother being locked up in prison,  _ if  _ he didn’t get locked up in some madhouse first.

Stanford needed help, and there was no one who could provide it but him. 

“The two of us against the world, huh,” he muttered, and opened the wooden box to take the journal out. He stared at it for a moment, then he slipped it under his jacket and threw the box away in the snow. “Sorry, Poindexter, but if I’m gonna help you I need to understand,” he said. And possibly some help from anyone who’s not police, he mentally added. At that point, knowing no one in that town aside from his own brother, there was only one name that could possibly come to his mind.

_ I searched for him after Bill revealed his true colors, but I couldn’t find him. _

“Fiddleford McGucket,” Stanley said aloud, turning towards the general direction where, he knew, the town had to be. “So, what are you up to, and what hole are you hiding in…?”


	4. Merging

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From this chapter onwards, there will be mentions of Bill’s backstory as detailed in [Flat Dreams](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6062122/chapters/13896454). It won’t be necessary reading it to know what’s going on here, though - I’ll make sure of that!

Stanley Pines did not have a healthy relationship with sleep. He did not have a healthy relationship with plenty of things, really, but sleep came pretty close to the top of the list.

It wasn’t always that way, really: there had been a time when he’d fall asleep snoring wherever he happened to be - on his desk at school, on the couch, on the deck of a partially rebuilt boat on Glass Shard Beach, New Jersey. And, later on, he had been able to sleep perfectly fine on the backseat of his car, or leaning against the when when said backseat became too full of junk.

It hadn’t lasted. Little by little, as his confidence he would make it big and would be able to return home to rub it in his father’s face - and Stanford’s, while he was at it - began to slowly fade, he had more and more trouble falling asleep. Of course, he’d had several perfectly reasonable explanations for that: he was often on the run from police and criminals alike, not to mention people who had turned out to be less than impressed by whatever he had sold them. He had plenty of reasons to sleep little, and always with one eye open just in case.

The empty space aching cold in his chest, the one he refused to acknowledge, couldn’t be the reason why he couldn’t sleep at night and would find himself staring out of the windshield or up at his family’s photograph until almost the crack of dawn.

Now there was no police or angry mobs to run away from, he had a comfortable bed to sleep in, and his brother was a few rooms away. He should have been perfectly capable of falling asleep right away, all things considered.

If it wasn’t for the fact he feared said brother was losing his damn mind, that was it. If it wasn’t for the fact he had flipped through the pages of that journal to see stuff that seemed to have come straight out of an acid trip - Manotaurs? Multi-Bear? Seriously? - and it made him worry even more about Ford’s mental state. If it wasn’t for the fact his brother was now sleeping in a  _ cage _ a few rooms away from him.

Any of that, he was pretty sure, would keep just about  _ anyone  _ from sleeping. 

“Listen to me, Stanley,” Stanford had said before going into his own room. “I will lock and bolt up the door. Even if you get past that, you cannot unlock the cage before it’s time. You can do  _ nothing _ . Whatever Bill does or says, whatever you hear, do not come. Do not attempt anything. Is that clear?”

“... Yeah. Crystal.”

It had been a few hours, and Stan had stayed wide awake, the back of his head resting on his folded hands, expecting something to happen. From time to time, he would stare at the door and wonder if maybe, just maybe, it wouldn’t be best to lock it. He was sure Ford wouldn’t ever harm him, but this Bill guy - this… second personality he seemed to have developed - sounded like a very dangerous bastard. Then again, Ford had taken such measures not to let him out that--

_ “AAAAAAAAAAAGH! LET ME OUT OF HERE!” _

The bloodcurdling scream that shattered the silence of the night caused Stan to bolt upright in bed, heart jumping up all the way to his throat. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. Even if something had left his mouth, it would have been drowned out by the next scream, resounding through the house like a gunshot.

“STANLEY! STAAAAANLEY! I know you’re out there! Where are you hiding?”

Hiding? He wasn’t  _ hiding, _ he was just doing as Stanford had--

“Is THIS how you look after your brother, Stan? You hide away and let someone TAKE HIM FROM YOU?”

_ Oh no you don’t. _

Stan was out of bed and out of the room in moments, before he could even realize he had stood, and then he was banging against the door of Stanford’s bedroom so hard that his hand hurt. He didn’t realize that, either. 

“Shut the hell UP! Whatever’s going on, I’ll fix it! I ain’t walking out on family, you hear?”

The answer he got was a laugh, high-pitched and maniacal, that made the hair on his neck stand. “HAHAHAHA! You serious? Ain’t that what you DID, Mr. I Don’t Need Anyone?”

It wasn’t true and it wasn’t fair - he had been kicked out, he would have never have left if he’d had a choice - and pain shot up Stanley’s arm when he slammed his fist against the door once more time, breaking the skin on his knuckles and drawing blood. “SHUT UP!”

Another laugh. “Wanna prove it, Mullet? Then come on in and let’s talk business. You want me to leave your brother alone, don’t you? There’s just a tiiiiny bit of metal to keep that from happening...”

Stan shorted, shutting his eyes and leaning his forehead against the door. A bit of metal,  _ sure. _ Was he really supposed to believe this Bill guy was a demon who had been trapped in his brother’s mind, and not just a product of… loneliness, or whatever had been going on there? A second personality that had just spawned out and called itself Bill just to… just… why had that happened?

_ How long have you been alone, Poindexter? This shouldn’t have happened. This is all my fault. I should have been here. _

“Stanley? Staaaan-leeee?” Bill - yeah, sure, he may as well call that personality as his brother did - sang-sung from the other side of the door. It made him grit his teeth and wish there was a way for him to get through and punch him without punching  _ Stanford  _ in the process. “You still there, pal? C’mon, let’s make a deal. You want your brother back, don’t you?”

_ And I’ll have him back, I promise you. _

“Door’s locked,” he growled instead. 

“I’m sure you can find a way. You can pick locks, no? You said that. As for the bolt, it’s nothing a powerful magnet wouldn’t take care of. Pretty sure your brother has a nifty magnetic gun somewhere in this shack of a place - probably in the toolbox? Shame it won’t work on surgical steel, ‘cause I’m pretty sure it would rip this pesky plate right outta his--”

“Shut yer yap,” Stanley snapped, opening his eyes and pulling away from the door. “I’m going back to sleep.”

For a moment there was no reply, and Stan dared to hope that madness was over with, at least for a time. Except that it wasn’t.

“What the-- wait, are you  _ serious, _ Mullet?” the voice came from the other side of the door again, sounding nothing short of stunned. “Going back to sleep? Look, I’m offering a deal--”

“Yeah, yeah. I take the plate outta his skull and you leave, is that it?”

“Heeey, not bad!” the voice came again, once again smug and with no trace left of the previous confusion. “Nice guess, Stan! Hey, you might be even smarter than good old Stanford here - shoulda been your field everyone threw their hat in. Sucks that your old man kicked you out. Between you and me, the one who could have used a good lesson in--”

Stan slammed his fist against the door once again, causing him to trail off, and growled through gritted teeth. “Shut it. I ain’t opening up Stanford’s head to mess with his  _ skull, _ so you can quit tryin’ to butter me up.”

“It’s the only way to get me outta here, Mullet. Look, this can be a win/win - good old Fordsy will be all better once I’m out--”

“Shut. It. You ain’t gonna leave if the plate goes out. May not be a shrink, but I’m pretty sure that’s not how you cure split personality or whatever, and-- hey, what is it?” Stan asked with a frown when another noise came from inside Stanford’s room: some rather undignified  _ sputtering.  _

“What the-- whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute there! Do you think this is split personality? Seriously? You think I am just a FIGMENT OF A SKIN PUPPET’S IMAGINATION?” the  _ thing  _ inside the room shrieked, causing Stan to grimace. 

“Keep it down, will ya, freakshow?”

“Keep it DOWN? I’ve seen GALAXIES rise and fall, you insignificant bag of bones! I am one of the  _ most feared beings in the multiverse, _ and I won’t be insulted--”

“Yeah, sure, Mr. Multiverse. Goodnight,” Stan snorted, and turned to leave, only to be stopped in his tracks by another, furious shriek.

“YOU CAN’T  _ IMAGINE  _ WHAT I CAN  _ DO  _ TO YOUR BROTHER’S BODY, STANLEY! YOU CAN’T IMAGINE WHAT A  _ MESS  _ YOU’RE GONNA FIND IN THE MORNING IF YOU  _ DARE  _ LEAVE NOW!”

The thought of all the marks he had seen on his brother - the split forehead, those bruises, scratches on both of his arms - caused a chill to run up Stan’s spine. That second personality - that  _ Bill  _ \- was stark raving mad, and he knew he would follow through with his threat if he left. On the other hand...

_ No matter what he may threaten or do to my body either, Stanley - never let him out. _

_ But if you-- I mean, if he-- _

_ Never! _

A muffled thud from the other side of the door cut off Stan’s thoughts, followed by  a grunt. Then there was another, and another - until it dawned on him what he was doing, what those sounds meant: he was bashing his head,  _ Stanford’s  _ head, against the bars.

“Hey!” Stan yelled, banging against the door. “Stop it! Stop it now!”

There was a laugh, then, “If you want me to stop, come in here! Come in here and let’s talk business, Mr. Pines,” Bill called out, and laughed again - that grating, shrill laugh that was nothing like his brother’s. “You’ve got ten minutes to pick that lock and get in here!”

Stan bristled. “Look, you piece of--”

“I AM COUNTING, MULLET!”

_ Bastard. _

With a muttered curse, Stan tore himself away from the door and rushed downstairs, then to the living room, where he had caught a glimpse of something that  _ did  _ look like a toolbox among the junk and creepy  _ stuff  _ scattered across the room. And, thankfully, he was not wrong: the toolbox was there, with everything he needed to pick a lock… and some kind of weird-looking gun as well. The magnet gun, maybe?

_ One way to find out.  _

“Whoa, this was fast, Mullet!” Bill’s voice greeted him when he returned at the door, the toolbox in his hand and panting, and got to work on the lock. It was more difficult to pick than expected, and it got him cursing under his breath and trying to hold a flashlight in his mouth to see whatever the hell he was doing.

“And I mean,  _ real  _ fast. You’ve still got seven minutes before I turn Fordsy’s face into mush!”

“Schrwyu,” Stan managed to grunt around the flashlight’s handle.

“Bless ya.”

The clack of the lock finally giving in covered the next profanity Stan tried to utter, but he decided to make up for it by spitting out the flashlight to speak again.

“Gimme one good reason why I shouldn’t take every single tool in this box and shove it up your--”

“Your brother’s body,” was the immediate reply.

… Oh. Right.

With a frustrated snort, Stan dropped the tools he’d been using and reached for the magnet gun. He pressed it on the spot of the door where he supposed to bolt was, pressed down on the trigger and--

_ CLANG. _

_ “Yowch!” _

“Oh, yeah! A word of warning - that thing will get lots of metal raining on you.”

Stan grunted, rubbing the back of his head and glaring at the bunch of tools that were now stuck on the magnet gun. “Warnings are only kinda useful  _ before  _ crap happens,” he grumbled, turning off the gun and letting the tools fall down with a clang. 

“Yeeeah, fair enough. But what would be the fun in that?”

“You’re insane.”

“Thanks.”

“Completely crazy.”

“Yup. More news at eleven. Now unbolt that door and let’s talk business, how ‘bout that?”

With a few more muttered curses, most of which he had learned in Colombia along with the recipe for the world’s worst prison alcohol, Stan dropped all the tools back in the box and brought it back downstairs. He stomped back upstairs with only the magnet gun in his hand, ignoring the growing bump on the back of his head. 

“Anything else you should warn me about?” he growled, pressing it against the door.

“Your hair’s terrible, Mullet.”

“Great. Anything  _ else, _ freakshow?”

“You’ve got no style and I  _ hope  _ you had a shower since yesterday, ‘cause--”

Stan ignored the rest and just pulled the trigger. There was a rattling sound, and he knew he’d got the bolt… but moving the gun and thus the bolt aside proved to be way more difficult than he had anticipated. “Uuuugh…! Why is it so heavy?”

“Big damn metal cage in here, Stanley. Gun’s getting all hung up to it but can’t move it. C’mon, got at least some muscle under the fat?”

“Nnngh… Keep this up and I  _ will  _ punch you.”

“Fine by me. Not  _ my  _ body. Hey, it’s moving!”

With one last grunt, Stan managed to move the gun to one side, and the bolt with it. There was a clack, and he sighed in relief, releasing the trigger. He put a hand on the doorknob and, bracing himself for whatever he would see next, opened the door to step in.

Stanford was standing in a cage in the middle of the room, hardly taller than himself and almost entirely taken by the mattress he slept onto. It was kept shut by a formidable-looking lock - the time lock Stanford had told him about, probably - but Stan hardly noticed it: his brother took all of his attention. 

He was standing on the mattress in the middle of the cage, six-fingered hands grasping the bars and a disturbingly wide smile on his face, as though he wasn’t even aware of the blood that ran out of his nose and down his chin, onto his nightshirt. Still, that smile faded a moment later, and he blinked.

“... Not that I ain’t glad to see you made it, Mullet, but you  _ could  _ have put on some pants.”

Suddenly acutely aware of the fact he was only wearing his boxers and undershirt - what the hell, he was in bed before that freak had started shrieking! - Stan grunted and crossed his arms. “You’d better hope you didn’t break Ford’s nose,” he said.

Before him, Ford - Bill? Bord? - shrugged. “Or else what, you’re gonna punch Sixer’s face?” he asked, gesturing to Stanford’s face, the disturbing smile making a comeback. There was something terrifying about it, and his eyes… holy Moses, his eyes looked all weird again, too. How did he  _ do  _ that?

Stan forced himself to ignore that, and narrowed his eyes. “You said you wanted to talk business. Here I am. Talk.”

The  _ thing  _ that was in his brother’s place shrugged. “It’s an easy deal, really. Baby simple. We want the same thing, you and I.”

“Do we?”

“Yup. Hear me out, Mullet. You want your dumb brother safe and sound, right?”

A scoff. “I thought you said I was the dumb twin,” he pointed out, and Stanford - Bill - rolled his… Stanford’s eyes. Damn it, that was all so confusing it made his head hurt.

“Oookay, sorry about that. Little slip of the tongue, that’s it. Didn’t mean it.”

“You also said I was sweaty.”

“Look, you  _ didn’t  _ smell of daisies, y’know.”

“Neither did you.”

“Hey, not my fault if Fordsy let himself go! I mean, have you looked around this place? The empty bottles ain’t there for show, lemme tell ya. And I don’t even get to drink any, ‘cause he keeps me here at night. All night. In the cold! Alone!” he added, pulling an exaggerated sad face that made Stan physically shiver.

“I’ll literally pay you to stop making that face.”

A shrug. “The only payment I’m interested in is freedom, and you’re in luck, ‘cause you can give me just that!”

Oh, right. Of course that was it. “Yeah, right. So, you’re some kind of demon stuck in my brother’s brain, and you need me to get that metal plate off whether Stanford wants it or not. You leave and my brother is all better without you. Is that right? That’s the deal?”

Bill beamed. “Precisely! See, you are smart. Sorta. Kinda. In a gorilla-ish sort of way. See, good old Six Fingers is too stubborn to see that’s for the best. He insists on keeping me in here, which is stupid, ain’t it? It makes me cranky, and I  _ hurt  _ things when I’m cranky,” he added, his voice dropping to a growl and grip tightening on the bars… except that a moment later all that was gone, the wide smile was back, and Stan had to wonder if he hadn’t imagined that moment. “And it ain’t only me, of course. I hold the  _ universe  _ in my mind, Mullet. The multiverse, really. I hold the knowledge of billions of years, the secrets of countless worlds long gone and times that have yet to come. It is too much, Mullet. Your brother’s brain, no matter how big by your standards, cannot handle it. Not for so long. I could sit down and be a good boy, and he’d still suffer. It’s killing him, ain’t it? Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.”

There was no denying that, of course, because something was draining Stanford’s health and sanity at an alarming rate, but the rest of it? It sounded like the kind of gibberish you’d hear coming from inside the padded cell of a madman.

_ And ain’t that where I am right now? _

Stan repressed a shiver, ignored the thought, and glared at Bill. “All right. Prove it.”

The unhinged smile faltered. “... What?”

“Prove you’re some kinda demon and not a second crazy personality Stanford got after hitting his head or something,” he said. “Prove I wouldn’t be pulling metal outta his skull and against his will for nothing. Do something… dunno. Magical. Pull a bunny outta a top hat.”

“I can’t,” Bill said, his voice clipped and cold. “This stupid  _ body  _ can’t do that. And your brother doesn’t even  _ own  _ a top hat. He’s got no style.”

“Yeeeah, just as I thought. Very convenient.”

“I’m not figment of a mortal’s imagination!” Bill snapped. “My name is Bill Cipher! The All Seeing Eye! I am--”

“And you  _ didn’t  _ see Stanford’s trap coming, All Seeing Eyeball?” Stan shot back, and he knew he had hit a nerve when Bill reared back as though he had been smacked in the face, hands gripping the bars so tightly the knuckles turned white. “Sheesh, trust Poindexter to get himself a lousy demon. You’d think that if he  _ had  _ to get himself possessed, he coulda picked something a bit more impress--”

“YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHO YOU’RE TALKING TO!” Bill screeched, cutting him off. “I can prove it to you! I have access to every corner of your brother’s mind! I know things only the two of you could--”

“Of course you can. You did come from his mind, after all.”

“I DID NOT!”

“Then  _ prove  _ it!”

Fury twisted Stanford’s features into something ugly and nearly unrecognizable. “JUST LOOK AT MY EYES, YOU WITLESS--” he trailed off, the anger fading suddenly as though someone had slipped a switch, to be replaced by a look of pure incredulity. “Wait, what… why… what is he doing there?”

Stan blinked. “Huh? Who’s doing what no--”

“SIXER! What do you think you’re DOING?”

“The hell--”

“GET OUTTA THERE! GET OUTTA THERE RIGHT NOW!” Bill shrieked and, before Stan could do anything to stop him, he based his head against the bars with such force that for one horrible moment Stan was sure he had cracked his skull open, he  _ must _ have. 

“Hey! Stop!” he yelled, trying to reach into the cage to somehow restrain him through the bars, but it was too late: all he could do was grasping his shirt as Ford’s body slumped, unconscious, down on the mattress.

* * *

_ This is not my Mindscape. _

The thought struck Ford halfway through a step, sudden as a bolt of lighting but certain as gravity. He didn’t know how he knew, not then and not later; everything around him was still shrouded in fog, the one he kept in his mind at all times in order to keep Bill as disoriented as possible. But he  _ knew, _ and that was enough.

_ Not my Mindscape. _

_ Whose, then? _

Ford took another step, then another, and slowly the fog around him began to dispel. He found himself staring at something vast and  _ bubbling, _ colors he had never seen swirling all around him. Piercing screams could be heard in the distance, there one moment and gone the next, but an odd murmur in a language he did not understand was constant even as everything shifted; doors appeared and disappeared in mid-air, melted away and formed again, most of them distorted as a Dali painting. 

It was misshapen, senseless, ever-shifting chaos - and there was only one being it could possibly belong to, only one being in whose Mindscape he may have wandered from his own.

_ Bill Cipher. _

The realization filled Ford with dread and anticipation in equal parts. Dread, because who knew what horrors dwelled there; anticipation, because that meant he had access to Bill’s own memories. His own secrets, everything he may have wished to keep away from him was now within his reach. The knowledge of the universe… and perhaps the key to his undoing, if any was to be found. 

“This was not supposed to happen, was it?” Ford said aloud, reaching up to run a hand through his hair. In the mindscape, he was healthy as he had been before that wretched mess began, with all of his hair and no scar on his scalp. “Is this a side effect to being trapped in my mind for so long? Is the line between my Mindscape and  _ his _ blurring?”

That had to be it. He could find no other explanation: he really doubted Cipher had  _ meant  _ to give him access to his mind. Therefore, he would likely be furious the moment he found out he was there. 

_ All the more reason to seek what answers I can find. _

Stanford Pines set his jaw, walked up to the closest door, and opened it to find himself facing… gray. Lots of gray everywhere, with touches of black and white, and walking around him - below him, really - were… geometric shapes?

_ Wait. What? _

Ford found himself staring incredulously ad the various shapes walking around, all of them with a single eye and thin black limbs reminiscing of Bill’s own. Except that they weren’t just triangles: he could spot squares, a couple of hexagons, a pentagon and then what looked like nothing more than straight lines with one eye. And all of them, every single one, were some shade of gray or black if lines, and no taller than maybe eleven or twelve inches. Low octagonal structures, maybe little over three feet high, were all around them. Houses? Shops? Hard to tell. Where  _ was _ he?

“Oh, Mr. Cipher! Opening up early today?”

Hearing that name caused Ford’s heart to jump up in his throat, and he immediately turned towards the source of the voice. His eyes found a square, standing in front of one of the buildings… and, before it, someone he would recognize anywhere. Bill Cipher, looking everything like he did right then, except for the fact there was no trace of color on him: only the same dull grey as everyone else.

Cipher - the Bill Cipher in the memory - shrugged, leaning on a cane he was carrying. “Yup! Early to rise and so on. Plus, it’s a good time for business. Gotta make the best out of it. So, need a new hat, or got something to pawn off?”

Whatever it was, Ford never knew.

“What in the Circles… what is that?”

“I’ve never seen anything like it!”

“It’s huge!”

“Mom! Mom! I’m scared!”

Ford glanced down to realize that various shapes had stopped in their tracks and were now staring at him through the doorway, chattering among themselves and clearly terrified - the kind of terror that was bound to break into panic the moment Ford tried to do or say anything. More and more shapes stopped, and Ford shot a look towards Bill to see that he had heard, and that he was starting to turn.

_ I can’t let him see me. _

The thought crossed his mind one instant, and he slammed the door shut one moment before Bill could see him. He stayed still for a moment, pressed against the door and mind reeling, trying to make sense out of what he had seen. Until that moment, he had always assumed Bill to be one of a kind; he had told him so himself, told him that there was no one like him in the universe.

But what if he had lied? What if he had belonged to a species? Were there more beings like him out there - beings that wielded the kind of power he had? Was Cipher only one of _ many?  _

The thought was too horrifying to contemplate, and Ford went to the next door he could approach - one that rippled into existence a few steps away from him - more to get his mind off it than because he truly felt ready to see more. Not that it made much difference: as it turned out, nothing could have prepared to what he was to witness on the other side. 

Within, there was a raging inferno. Fire, fire everywhere, engulfing a black mass that might have been buildings; few undistinguished forms - shapes, not just forms, those were geometric shapes - were running through the fire, the cacophony of screams unbearable. And high above it all, laughing maniacally, was a horribly familiar sight. His surface was pitch-black, his eye red as blood, but there was no mistaking him.

Bill.

_ I’m on of a kind, Sixer, _ he had told him once.  _ No one like me in the whole multiverse! _

_ Because everyone else is gone,  _ Ford thought, and suddenly felt violently sick. He staggered back, letting the door close, and he didn’t open the door across as much as he bumped into it - causing it to give in and him to fall through it with a yelp. 

“Ow!”

“Hey!”

Ford immediately twisted to turn on his stomach so he could push himself up on his feet and face whatever lurked beyond that door, but he froze when he found himself staring at one single, wide eye in the middle of a small, gray triangle. 

_ Cipher, _ he thought. He was about to spit out as much, but the being before him spoke again, and he knew something was amiss. Because Bill Cipher’s voice was shrill, of course, but not  _ that _ shrill. That voice didn’t belong to the Cipher he had met. It was the voice of a  _ child _ .

“Who are you?” the being asked, and his eye, if possible, grew even wider. It was tiny, Ford was stunned to realize,  _ so _ tiny. Smaller than Cipher had looked in that first memory he had seen, that was for sure: Ford could probably carry him easily in the palm of his hand.

“I, uh…” he began, only to find that the child wasn’t up to wait for him to reply. 

“Are… are these colors?”

“... Huh?”

The reply was far from brilliant, but it seemed to just fuel the child’s enthusiasm. “You have two eyes! Why do you have  _ two _ eyes? What do you  _ do _ with two eyes? Are you the Sphere? Huh? Huh? Are you?” he asked, jumping up and down on tiny black legs. At that point, his pupil was blown so wide it seemed to be covering the whole surface of his eye. “Can you talk? C’mon! Tell me! Is this really what color looks like?”

“What are you - wait! No!”

“It’s fluffy! What is this  _ fluff _ for?”

“Get  _ out _ of my hair!” Ford snapped, and shook his head violently, pulling himself up on his knees. 

“Whoa!”

Still rather confused as to what he was supposed to do or say, Ford ran a hand through his hair and looked down as the child sat up and glared up at him.

“That hurt!”

Ford frowned back. “Has no one ever told you it’s rude to jump on people’s heads without permission?”

“... What’s a head?”

Oh. Right. If that was the first time he - this…  _ memory  _ of Cipher - ever saw a human being, it was probably to be expected that he wouldn’t be familiar with the terms indicating their anatomy. “The… the place where you jumped. What covers it is called hair.”

“That fluff?”

“It’s not  _ fluff. _ It’s hair.”

The child seemed to consider the information for a moment, then changed subject. “What shape  _ are _ you?”

“I’m… not a shape.”

“You’re not the Sphere, then?”

“I am afraid not.”

Disappointment creased the boy’s brow for a moment - could it even be called ‘brow’? - and then it was gone. “But that  _ is _ color, right?” he asked, pointing at Ford’s coat. With a quick look at his surroundings, which looked much like a child’s bedroom, Ford nodded. Black, white and gray; it truly did look like whatever world Bill originated from held no color.

“Yes. It is color.”

“Are you from the Third Dimension?”

“I… well, we do have three dimensions in my world, so I suppose…”

“I read about it!” the child exclaimed, jumping on his feet. “All about it! Look!”

For the first time, Ford noticed the small pile of books on the floor. One of them was still open, and he reached to take it, careful not to ruin. It was very tiny and, when Ford squinted to see what was written in it, he wasn’t too surprised to find he couldn’t understand a word. Whatever meaning those symbols had, they were nothing like anything he had ever seen before.

“They’re forbidden books,” Bill - how else could he call him? - boasted. “Having one is, like, immediate execution! Or life in prison with isolation. Or something. No one’s supposed to know the Third Dimension exists, but  _ I  _ do!” he added, crossing his arms. Ford got the distinct him impression that, had he had a chest to puff out, he’d have done just that. 

“Forbidden books,” he repeated. “How did you precisely come into possession of such things?”

“I… huh…” Bill paused and frowned, and something about him changed, shifted. Under Ford’s amazed gaze, the dull grayness of his surface flickered into something that looked much like static, as though he was staring at a broken TV set. Then the child blinked, and the burst of static passed. His surface stopped rippling and returned a solid gray. “I don’t know,” he finally said.

“You don’t know?”

“Nu-uh. It’s… like…” a pause, and he shrugged. “Dunno. Can’t remember. I just have ‘em.”

Ford turned his gaze back on the tiny book he was holding. “How old are you, Bill?” he found himself asking. 

“Eight,” was the reply. “But I’m going to be nine in-- heeey, wait! How did you know my name?” he asked, and his eye widened again. “If you’re not the Sphere, then you’re  _ like _ the Sphere, right? You know everything, right? And you can tell me stuff?”

Ford gave a smile that came out as somewhat bitter. The irony of being mistaken for an all-knowing creature by Bill Cipher of all beings was not lost to him. “I suppose I do know a few things.”

_ I know you’re a monster. Do you? _

“Take me to the Third Dimension!” the child cried out, and began leaping up with excitement. “C’mon c’mon c’mon c’mon! Take me there! I wanna see it!”

“Er… you see, I can’t quite--”

_ “SIXER! What do you think you’re DOING?” _

Cipher’s voice - his adult voice - thundered through the whole Mindscape, causing Ford to wince and turn. Through the door he could see countless eyes opening up into the shifting chaos that was that Mindscape, all of them fixed on him and flashing red with fury.

_ “GET OUTTA THERE! GET OUTTA THERE RIGHT NOW!” _

There was no time for Ford to react or say anything, because the next moment something seemed to explode in his head - not pain, but  _ something _ all the same - and it all went black. He could  _ feel _ himself being pulled out of the Mindscape, and then nothing more.

* * *

“Uuugh…”

“Ford? Stanford! You’re awake? Oh holy Moses, you’re awake! I was starting to think--”

Forcing his eyes open felt like the hardest thing Ford had ever done: his head hurt, each eyelid seemed to weigh a ton, and he was rather certain that Stanley’s voice was only making it all worse.

… Wait. Stanley?

“Stanley? What are you doing here?” Ford managed, struggling to put him into focus. There he was, face only a few inches from his own across the bars and… and… “You shouldn’t be here.”

“Yeah, but it was kinda, uh. Look, I’ll explain later. Are you okay?”

“I told you to  _ never  _ come in here, no matter what,” Ford said, ignoring the question and pushing himself up on his elbows. His head spun and he felt some blood dripping from his nose, but it was nothing unbearable. “You had instructions for a  _ reason, _ Stanley! How did you manage to get… Stan?” he called out when Stanley gave a deep breath, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Not sure how I should say this,” he mumbled, eyes shut. “But I’ll try anyway. Stanford?”

“Yes?”

“Go fuck yourself.”


	5. McGucket

“... You gonna give me the silent treatment for much longer, Poindexter? ‘Cause I ain’t apologizing.”

Stan underlined the statement with a challenging glare across the kitchen table, but it went entirely wasted: Stanford didn’t look up from his plate. He was chewing his breakfast slowly, the way an old man would, and Stan felt a pang of guilt for snapping like he had. All right, they both had snapped, trading screams and insults and would have probably traded _blows_ if that cage hadn’t been between them… but Stan was mentally sound, and his brother was not. He shouldn’t have snapped. Shouldn’t have screamed.

 _Still not gonna apologize,_ he thought, but he did speak again after taking in a deep breath.

“Look, I was worried. Wouldn’t you have come running if you heard me screaming in the middle of the night? Warnings and all?” he asked. Ford paused, and Stan had a moment to fear he was going to get a negative answer _\- no, of course I would not, you ruined my life, my future, everything -_ before Stanford looked up at him.

“I ignored warnings too, Stanley,” he finally said slowly, sounding so horribly tired. “I ignored those on the walls of a cave. I ignored those coming from a dear friend. I ignored so many warnings, and it was my undoing. Don’t let it be yours, too.”

There was a certain hopelessness in his words, like he had resigned himself to never getting any better, that chilled Stan to the bone. He opened his mouth to say something, but Stanford spoke first.

“I have a favor to ask you,” he said, putting down the fork and pushing the table aside. “I need you to go in town and see if you can find something for me.”

“What is it?”

“A straitjacket.”

“Sure! No problem. A straitjacket, I got-- wait, what?”

Stanford gave a grim smile. “It might be the only way to make sure Bill can’t harm me too seriously when he… when he takes over. I didn’t acquire one earlier because it wouldn’t have been possible for me to put it on by myself, but now I have you to help with that,” he added, and for a moment his smile seemed less grim. It was enough for Stan to swallow his retort - _where_ did he think he was gonna find a straitjacket? - and nod.

What the hell, you can find anything if you look hard enough. Maybe the local hospital had some crap they were willing to sell, or he could just find himself the stuff he needed to make one himself. And besides, he could use a good excuse to visit the town: there was a nerd somewhere out there that he just _had_ to find.

“... Yeah, sure. I could, uh. Make one. I just need to grab a few things. Got a sewing machine?”

That caused his brother to blink. “You know how to _make_ a straitjacket?”

“Sure! I picked up skills on the road, you know.”

“Do I even wish to know what kind of situation would require you--”

“Probably not.”

“Fair enough,” Stanford conceded, and asked nothing more on the matter. “There is some money in the jar - yes, that one. You can use my car to go to town. No snow is expected for the next thirty-six hours.”

“Great. Was gonna ask about that car - looks like a monster chewed it up and then spat it back out.”

“That’s more or less what happened.”

“... What?”

“Nothing. What matters is that it’s in working order.”

Stan nodded. “Oh, good. ‘Cause the StanMobile is kind of stuck some nine miles up the road. Will have to recover that sooner or later, I guess.”

Something that looked remarkably like a smile curled Stanford’s lips. “You still have it?”

Stan nodded. “Sure! Good as new. Kinda. But hey, it’s sturdy - if it survived the two of us learning how to drive on it, it’ll survive everything!” he added, and felt very pleased with himself when Stanford chuckled. Getting him to do that was a better feeling than winning a good wad of cash at the scratch ticket lottery. Or at least, he supposed it was.

It wasn’t like he had ever won one of those lotteries to begin with.

* * *

Ford waited until the sound of his car’s engine died down in the distance before he reached under his coat - he was cold all the time, so cold, and had taken to wearing it inside the house - to pull out a small notebook. It was nothing like his journals: it was a simple thing meant to scribble down notes of little importance, occasional grocery lists and, even from time to time, doodles.

And, when he opened it, the first thing he saw was a drawing of the water tower.

_I have weapons in the house. Even without those, I can find a way. The water tower, perhaps. A leap is all that it would take._

Ford turned to the window. He couldn’t see the water tower from there, but he knew exactly where it was. It wouldn’t be a long walk at all. The fall would take even less, and then it would be over - for him and Cipher both.

_You lost, Bill. We both have. I am fine with it. Are you?_

“Am I?” Ford said, very quietly. He could go now, he knew. He could end it once and for all, for him and Cipher both. Now that Stanley was away for at least a few hours, there was nothing stopping him. Perhaps he had been going on for too long as things were.

Except that Stanley wouldn’t stay away. He would return. He would look for him, and _find_ him. Ford could imagine his body after the fall, motionless on the ground, limbs splayed like those of a broken mannequin. What he couldn’t bring himself to imagine, however, was the look on his brother’s face when he found him.

His brother, who had come when he had called after ten years of silence. His brother, who had offered his organs, his marrow, his _blood_ for him without a moment’s hesitation. His pig-headed twin, who had refused to just take that journal and leave, refused to follow his instructions just because he was worried about _him,_ the fate of the world be damned. What would he think - what would he _do_ \- if he returned to find he had taken his life during his absence?

_You’re not gonna die on my watch, Poindexter._

Ford sighed, and turned the page so that he wouldn’t have to look at the drawing anymore. He drew in a long breath, trying to clear his mind, and tried to rid himself of such morbid thoughts. After all, there was something else he should be thinking about, which was part the reason why he had decided to send Stanley out on an errand: the fact he had been able to look into the memories of Bill Cipher.

 _It is a two-way road,_ he wrote on the blank page. _I can access his Mindscape like he can access mine. And he hates it. It was not his doing. He doesn’t want me there any more than I want him in mine._

He stared down at the words he had written, smiling somewhat grimly. “How the tables have turned,” he muttered, and resumed writing - about what he had seen, about the memories there.

_He claimed he was one of a kind. He was lying. He is simply the last._

And then, of course, there was the Bill Cipher he had met, the memory of him. A child. Ford had always assumed Cipher had come to be, somehow, an eternity before; never once he had considered that he may have been _born._

 _He didn’t seem malicious,_ Ford wrote. _But it is still Bill Cipher. He cannot be trusted._

A child, sure, but still an odd one. Forbidden books, he had said, so much that owning them could mean death or imprisonment for life; it was not something that was supposed to be in the hands of a child. And yet, he somehow had them. More importantly, he couldn’t explain how or why they had come in his possession: when trying to remember, his whole form had rippled into gray static.

 _Damaged,_ he wrote. _A damaged memory of Bill Cipher._

But what did that mean?

_GET OUTTA THERE! GET OUTTA THERE RIGHT NOW!_

When the scream had thundered across the Mindscape, when red eyes had opened up all around him to glare down at him, Ford had thought Cipher’s voice was full of anger. And it was, no doubt about it, but there was something else, too: now that he could think back of that moment, in the stillness and silence of his home, it was so obvious. Bill hadn’t _only_ been furious at the intrusion.

He had also been _scared._

* * *

“No, no, no, no, no - this ain’t happening! _Can’t_ be happening!”

Except that of course it was happening, and how: not even Cleopatra Queen of Denial could possibly ignore the fact that the line between Stanford’s mindscape and that of Bill Cipher was starting to fade. Things couldn’t possibly get any worse, except that they _could,_ because Ford had left a certain door open when he had been yanked out of that place.

“Where did that stupid _kid_ go?”

Nowhere in his mindscape, of course, or else he’d be able to see him: he had eyes in every corner, after all, and he was not there. He had eyes in Ford’s own mindscape, too, but Sixer’s struggle to make it incredibly hard for him to navigate - resulting in that accursed _fog_ \- made said eyes entirely useless. The kid must have wandered _there,_ but he couldn’t see him.

Well, _of course_ he had wandered off. The door was open, the chance to see what lay beyond just there, and he had grabbed it because that was precisely what Bill Cipher had always done: latch onto every opportunity he could find.

With groan, Bill snapped his fingers, causing the door to what had been his bedroom an eternity before to slam shut.

 _All right,_ he thought, _one problem at time._

One of his memories being loose in Sixer’s mindscape was an annoyance, but nothing more than that: there was very little of useful that kid could tell him, anyway. Nothing, most likely, the memory so old and forgotten about that he probably had no awareness of what had transpired in the past trillion years. Whatever he could tell Ford if found was unlikely to be anything IQ hadn’t figured out by himself while sneaking in his mind.

What really worried Bill was the fact Sixer had been there in the first place. The fact their mindscapes were _merging_ was horrible news for both: not only it allowed Sixer to stick his stupid red nose where it didn’t belong, but it would also put more and more strain on his own limited mind. How long before he snapped? How long before he went through with his threat to destroy himself and Bill both?

Time was running out, and Stanley Pines - that useless pile of dumb - didn’t even believe he _existed,_ let alone take him serious enough to strike a deal with him. He needed to find a way to convince him he was the real deal, and quickly. Failing that, he would… he… he’d move on to Plan C, of course.

As soon as he came up with it.

* * *

“So, the coat and the helmet, and these as well,” Stan said, putting the belts down on the counter and trying to act all the world like he _didn’t_ have six more on him, two around each leg under his pants and two more at his waist. Thankfully, the clerk - who looked bored out of her mind - gave no sign of noticing and just rang up his purchases.

She did, however, raised an eyebrow when she heard Stan’s stomach grumbling. “You may wanna drop at Greasy's Diner for a bite before someone thinks there’s an earthquake.”

“Har har,” Stan said drily, but his stomach grumbled _again_ \- he had barely touched breakfast that morning, really, still shaken by the previous night - and her rolled his eyes. Alright, maybe he could use a bite… and besides, a diner seemed a good place like any other to start looking for a couple of answers in a small town. “... Fine. Where’s this place?”

* * *

“Where _am_ I?”

Bill’s voice echoed in the fog for only a moment before silence returned, as though the whiteness around him had swallowed it up. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been wandering there, wherever that was, but he couldn’t see a thing, all he could hear was the steady _tap-tap-tap_ of his own steps, and he wouldn’t know how to turn back even if he wanted to.

“Hello? Anyone?”

Silence.

“I, uh. I think I’m lost!”

No answer.

“Is there a Sphere or a, uh… a Cone? Pyramid? Something? I think I need directions!”

More silence. If that was the Third Dimension, it royally _sucked._

“AW, C’MON! Someone! Anyo--”

_Whack._

“Ow! _Ow!_ Seriously?”

The blow wasn’t too strong because he hadn’t been walking fast at all, but slamming against what felt a lot like a wall still hurt. Bill stumbled back, hands pressing against his eye. He blinked back tears - that _stung_ \- and scowled at the… the… wait, was that a door? It was, and it had color on it: a dark one, sure, but different from the black he was used to. It had the same color as the fluff - hair, wasn’t it? - he had seen on the odd thing that had stumbled in his room.

Excitement replacing the earlier disappointment, Bill immediately reached up for the handle, eager to find out what was on the other side and… and…

… And he couldn’t reach it. His hand grasped only air, not even halfway up to the handle.

“Aw, c’mon!” he protested, and tried to jump. It got him slightly closer to the handle, not not nearly high enough to reach it. Why was that door so huge anyway? Even an adult couldn’t get all the way up here! “Just open up! Stupid door! Open up!” Bill snapped, and kicked it, only to regret it a moment later. “OUCH!”

Bill was still hopping awkwardly on one foot when he heard something drifting beneath the tiny crack under the door - something that sounded a lot like giggles, and then he could hear a voice, muffled but clear enough for him to catch the words.

“So, what’s the nerdy story today? Pleeease tell me there aren’t aliens in this one, or I’m gonna throw up!”

“No aliens, but there are ships! And a whale! And adventure!”

“And ladies and treasures?”

“Huh, no. But there’s a huge white whale!”

“Neato!”

“Hey!” Bill called out, and limped back to the door. He didn’t knock as much as he punched its surface. “Hey! Someone! Let me in!”

To his disappointment, he got no reply. Even worse, the people inside kept talking he _wasn’t_ out there, pounding at the door, like they couldn’t even hear him knocking and calling out. Maybe they couldn’t… but then, why could Bill hear them?

“So, what is it?”

“It’s called Moby Dick, and--”

_“Pffffft…!”_

“Stan, stop that! That’s immature!”

“Hey, complain with the author! He picked the name! Who picks a title like that for a book about a fish?”

“Look, first of all, Moby Dick isn’t a _fish._ It’s a sperm whale and-- stop _laughing,_ Stanley!”

Bill had absolutely no idea what a whale was or what was so funny about it, but he could still find out. Maybe those inside couldn’t hear him, but he could hear them and he liked stories, so in the end he sat down with his back to the door, hugging his knees, and listened.

_“Call me Ishmael…”_

* * *

“How should I call you, stranger? I actually think I’ve seen you before…”

If it wasn’t for the fact he looked everything like his brother, Stan would have thought the diner’s owner was making a pass at him - and, truth be told, he couldn’t entirely discard the idea, because she was leaning awfully close.

_Well, if that’s the case, you’ve got the job of asking for info cut out for you._

Stan swallowed another bite of his omelette and gave her the most charming smile he could manage. “Stanley Pines,” he said, leaning on his elbow. “You can call me Stan, miss…?”

“Susan,” she giggled, a hand reaching up to her mouth, but it was short-lived: a moment later her eyes widened, and Stan had a moment to panic - _what is it has she heard of me I wasn’t banned from Oregon was I_ \- before she spoke.

“Oooh! Are you the scientist in the woods?” she asked, her voice low like they were discussing some sort of conspiracy. Not that there was any need for it, since the diner was almost empty, but what caused Stan to blink was something else entirely: Stanford had been living at the outskirts of that tiny town for at least six years, and yet the owner of the local diner didn’t even know his name.

Then again, maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised: Ford had always liked to keep to himself. And besides, it wasn’t like many of the people Stan had met in the past ten years had ever known his name, either. Not the _true_ one, anyway.

“I, uh…”

“We have been wondering about you for years! There are so many tales about your place!”

“It’s not my place,” Stan blurted out, causing her to blink. “I mean… that’s my brother’s place, you see. That’s the guy you’re thinking of. Stanford. I’m just here to visit. Y’know, watch the local beauties and all,” he added with a grin, and she chuckled again.

“Oh, I see! But I could have sworn… you look so alike!”

“Twins,” Stan explained, gesturing for his face. “Two specimens of _this_ around.”

_Nevermind Stanford looks a ruin at the moment. You don’t need to know that._

Unaware of his thoughts, she grinned. “Lucky us,” she all but cooed, and filled up a cup of coffee before sliding it across the counter and to him. “On the house. Might have a slice of pie left, too.”

Whoa, free stuff? Free food? That wasn’t something Stan was gonna pass, no siree.

“I think this is the part where I ask you if you fell from heaven,” he said, and if the way she giggled was of any indication, she had her hooked. Now was probably the best moment to ask. “Actually, I am looking for someone. Friend of my brother, but he can’t find him - he lost his number _and_ address. Misplaced his journal or something,” he added, taking out a photograph from his pocket. He had nicked it from Stanford’s living room, and it showed his brother along with another guy - that Fiddleford McGucket Stanford had told him about, and who was supposedly up to something fishy there in Gravity Falls.

 _Look at them,_ Stan thought as he set the image down. _Nerdy and Nerdier. Must have been having a blast until something went wrong._

And when things went wrong and turned ugly, the guy had just walked out on his brother. Some _friend_ Stanford had picked. Stan would give him a piece of his mind about that among other things, once he found him. Because he _would_ find him, Stanford’s warnings be damned.

_I ignored so many warnings, and it was my undoing. Don’t let it be yours, too._

_I’m done playing safe, Poindexter._

“So, uh. Ever seen this guy, Susan?” Stan asked, Stanford’s words still echoing in his mind. She looked down at the picture, squinting a bit, then her eyebrows shot up. “Oh, sure! That’s the guy who’s renting a place from my cousin!”

Stan blinked. Well, that had been easy. How was it possible that his brother had searched for that guy for weeks and still failed to find him?

_Didn’t ask around, that’s how. Always wants to solve everything on his own, that pig-headed jerk._

Stan smiled. “That’s great! Where is it he’s staying?”

“Number 9, Raccoon Close,” she immediately said, then she shot a glance around the mostly empty diner before lowering her voice. “My cousin says he’s a polite guy and all, but he keeps to himself. Hardly ever seen him going out.”

_Great. Two hermits at the price of one. But this makes things easier._

“I’ll let my brother know,” he said, letting the photograph slip back in his pocket. “Thanks a bunch. And pie looks delicious,” he added, and she giggled again, putting the dish down in front of him. It smelled great, too.

“On the house. Hope you’re going to stay for a while,” she added with a wink, and went to take the order of some other client who had just walked up to the counter. Stan glanced at his watch, then he shrugged and began eating the pie. There was no way for him to go pay a visit to Nerdy right then, because Stanford would probably wonder what was taking him that long. He could do it later - like, say, that night.

After all, he was about to make absolutely sure that Ford would be as safe as he could be at night, with or without him in the house.

* * *

“Alright, time for a test! Try breaking free - that’s not _trying,_ Poindexter! Try harder!”

“I am,” Ford gritted out, features twisted in the effort. He pulled with all his might, twisted, strained until his vision began to blur, but to no avail: when he slumped back against the cage’s bars, gasping for breath, the makeshift straitjacket - put together by sewing belts into an oversized coat whose sleeves could easily knot behind his back even with his arms in them - hadn’t yielded at all. He couldn’t possibly hope to free his arms and, more importantly, that meant that neither could Bill.

“I can’t,” he breathed, and Stanley gave a triumphant smile.

“Perfect,” he said, and proceeded to tie his legs together with three more belts, securing them tightly. Ford opened his mouth to thank him, but found himself blinking when Stanley pulled something out of his pocket - a piece of leather he had attached to a strap. It didn’t take a PhD, let alone twelve, to guess it was a gag.

_Is that strictly necessary?_

Stanley seemed to guess the unspoken question, and shrugged. “Just to make sure you-- er, Bill doesn’t try to bite your tongue off or something. He’s gonna get frustrated, I bet. So better wedge something between your teeth to make sure he can’t do it. Better to drool a bit than to spit out blood and half a tongue, I bet.”

That, Ford had to admit, was a valid point. Bill would certainly despise being entirely unable to move, and desperate to find _some_ way to cause him harm.

“Good idea,” he conceded, and let Stanley put the gag on him, tilting his head forward so that he could fasten the strap behind his head.

“This would look so awkward if someone walked in,” Stanley muttered, and Ford had a moment to realize what he had just said and roll his eyes before he took off his glasses and picked up something else - a bulky motorcycle helmet that would cover his whole head and face except for his nose and eyes. The plexiglass eye guard had been removed to make sure Bill couldn’t shatter it against the bars or anything, the helmet itself was too thick for Bill to hurt Ford’s face on anything at all, let alone the bars, by just slamming his head against them.

Honestly, he was impressed: his brother had thought of everything.

“Aaaand done,” Stanley announced once he was done putting the helmet over his head and closing the straps under his chin. His face looked fuzzy due to the lack of glasses, but it was impossible not to see how wide his grin was. “I dare that bastard to try anything now.”

 _Don’t dare him. Never dare him,_ Ford thought, although the constraints Stanley had placed on him _did_ make him feel remarkably safer, at least on a physical plane. Either way, he was unable to speak and just nodded towards the cage’s door instead.

“Right,” Stanley muttered. He helped him down on the mattress and then stepped out, closing the door. The time lock clicked in place, only to open in exactly eight hours, at the ring of the alarm clock. “So, uh. Goodnight,” he added, and Ford found himself wishing he could reciprocate, but nodding was all he could do before Stanley switched off the light and left the room, locking the door behind himself.

Stanford listened to his twin’s retreating steps, then closed his eyes and focused on steadying his breath. For the first time in a long while, he didn’t dread the thought of falling asleep, and not only because of the restraints that would keep Bill from leaving or harming him in any way. Actually, we welcomed it: let Cipher try to take over his body now. Let him fail to even move or hurt him. Let him _scream._

As for him, he had a Mindscape to explore - one Bill Cipher desperately wanted to keep him out of. And that, as far as he was concerned, was a perfectly valid reason to go back.

* * *

The screams - muffled, yeah, but still audible - began the moment Stan stepped into the living room to grab the car keys. It caused him to wince and almost turn on his heels to bolt upstairs, but he forced himself not to, to keep walking across the room, take the keys, and then walk to the door.

 _Stanford is safe,_ he told himself. _He’s safe as he can be. He can’t hurt himself. There is nothing more I can do for him in here._

But out there maybe, just _maybe,_ someone could help. He would at least know something about that whole mess, could shed some light on what the hell had really happened. Stanley needed answers, answers that made sense, and as far as he could tell there was only one person who could possibly provide them.

Fiddleford Hadron McGucket, 9 Raccoon Close.

Time to pay Nerdy a visit.

* * *

Bill screamed through the gag until his - Stanford’s - throat felt raw, bit into the leather until his jaw ached, and would later tell himself it was all out of spite, it was all to cause his wretched body what discomfort he could. But it would be a lie, of course.

The truth was that he couldn’t stop screaming, a scream that remained wordless only because he had been rendered unable to _say_ anything at all.

_Let me out of here! I WANT OUT! SOMEBODY! ANYBODY! LET ME OUT!_

This time, he screamed to no avail: Stanley Pines did not come. And why should he? He had rendered him harmless. Helpless. Powerless.

Stanford would never let him go. Stanley would not listen. And he was running out of _time._

_I’LL GIVE YOU ANYTHING! PLEASE!_

There was no answer, no noise except for the muffled screams, and it was too much. Something seemed to grasp his throat and chest, the unfamiliar grip of panic, and this time he was unable to fight it back. Stanford’s body spasmed and the screams became even more muffled, like he was forcing them out past a block. When he fell quiet, it wasn’t because he had wanted to stop: it was because he was too out of breath to, a weight on his chest keeping him pinned down on that mattress, tethered to that wretched mortality and a fear of death he was never supposed to have to face.

* * *

The house Stan found at the end of the close had seen better days, though it still looked better than a lot of places he’d had to sleep through the years. If anything the windows were all intact and the roof seemed solid; a few loose bricks had fallen from one of the walls, but there were no holes in it or anything. Not a five-star accommodation, but decent enough.

Except that, according to Stanford, the guy had a wife and a young child back in California. If he no longer working with his brother, why hadn’t he returned home? Was he really behind some weird cult, like Stanford had said? Something about a blind eye, if he remembered right. The hell was it, a secret society of ophthalmologists?

 _None of my business anyway - I just need to know more about what really happened to Stanford,_ Stan thought, getting out of the car and trying not to slip on the ground, where the remaining snow had turned into a muddy slush. There was no moon, clouds hiding even the stars, but the streetlights were of some help, at least. He walked up to the door, trying to think up of something to say that didn’t start with an insult for leaving his brother to fend for himself, but never reached it: he was still several steps away when it opened and a hooded figure stepped out, closing the door behind himself and stepping into the road.

… Alright, fine. He got points for presentation, because that was _way_ creepier than any twig-like nerd had any right to look.

“McGucket?”

It took Stan a moment to realize it had been him to speak; in that same moment, the man froze in his tracks and looked up. He couldn’t see his face under the hood, but he did see the light reflecting on glasses for a moment, and he _definitely_ heard the shriek that followed.

“No! NO! Not you!”

Stan opened his mouth to explain who he was, but he had no time to say a word: in one motion, the man had stepped back and reached to grab something under his robe, something he lifted up against him and that looked all the world like--

_Damn._

_“It is unseen!”_ McGucket cried out, and Stan threw himself on the ground just on time to avoid a sudden ray of blinding light. He had never seen a gun like that before, but he wasn’t gonna stand around to find out what it _did._ He rolled across the ground, narrowly avoiding another flash, and his hand closed around something hard one moment before he stood.

McGucket turned, gun lifted, but Stan wasn’t about to give him another chance.

_“It is unsee--”_

_“Unsee this!”_

Yet another ray was shot towards him when he charged, but Stan had seen in coming, and darted to the right. He lifted his hand, the one holding the brick, and slammed it down on McGucket’s wrist. Three sounds reached Stan at almost the same time: bone snapping, something clattering on the ground, and the choked gasp of someone who’s a moment away from screaming.

But the scream never came, because Stan turned and slammed the brick on the side of the guy’s head, causing him to crumple on the ground, where he stayed perfectly still. Out cold. Or so Stan hoped, because last thing he needed was finding himself wanted for _murder._

“Hot. Belgian. Waffles,” he breathed, letting the brick fall and giving a quick look at the houses surrounding them. He could see nothing - no lights on, no movement. It looked like no one had seen what had just happened; a stroke of luck, at long last.

_Great. Absolutely awesome. What now?_

“Now it is unseen,” Stan muttered sarcastically, and reached down to grab the gun. It was a weird gun for sure, but he would have time to take a look at it later, so he just pocketed the gun and knelt next to McGucket’s still form. The hood had fallen back when he had hit the ground and yeah, that was definitely the guy he had been looking for: a bit scruffier, maybe, with his cheeks covered in stubble and dark shadows under both eyes, but other than that he looked pretty much the same.

His chest rose and fell with his breathing, and his heartbeat was regular. Stan gave a sigh of relief before he grabbed him under the shoulders and began dragging him to Stanford’s car.

“Crazy bastard,” he muttered under his breath, placing him on the backseat and getting on the driver’s seat. He gave one last look outside - once again, no sign anybody had seen or heard anything - and turned on the engine, driving towards Stanford’s home with his headlights off.

Sure, he supposed a good citizen would have taken that guy to the hospital, but he wasn’t a _good citizen_ \- he had a crime record a mile long to prove that - and hospital wasn’t an option: that would mean having to give explanations he couldn’t give, while all he needed were answers. Hopefully, Fiddlesticks would be able to provide at least a few of them.

He just hoped Stanford wouldn’t mind getting an extra guest.


	6. Shadows on the Wall

Somewhere in the distance, Ford could hear screaming.

He ignored it and kept walking through the fog that lingered in every corner of his mindscape, but he was unable to keep a smile from curling his lips. It sounded like Bill wasn’t happy with the restrictions they had put on him in the physical world. Ford had to admit that it gave him no small measure of satisfaction - _let him scream!_ \- but he has no time to pause and enjoy his distress.

He had to find the entrance point to Bill’s own mindscape while he was in the physical plane, so he could find out more about him and hopefully, _hopefully_ find a way to vanquish him for good. And the only way to find out--

“Hey!”

“Ow!”

Falling on the non-existent floor didn’t hurt, to be quite honest, but Ford’s first instinct was still to yelp when he stumbled on something, as his body and mind braced themselves for pain that wouldn’t reach him. What _did_ reach him, however, was a shrill and rather petulant voice.

“What was _that_ about? Watch where you’re-- oh, hey! It’s you! The… big thing!”

Ford pulled himself up on his knees and looked down at the tiny, gray, one-eyed triangle he had just stumbled on. “... Big thing?”

The child - Bill - shrugged. “You said you’re not a Sphere, and I don’t know what you are,” he pointed out, then, “I was looking for you! Is _this_ the Third Dimension? There’s nobody here! Just a lot of doors I can’t open, and people there don’t answer to me!”

“They can’t hear you,” Ford said, shifting in a sitting position and watching the boy with some fascination. Come to think of it, when Bill had yanked him out of his mind, the door to the memory the child was part of had stayed open. It looked like he had wandered out rather than staying put where he should have been - and, Ford mused, he seemed unaware of being in the mindscape at all. Unaware of the fact he was but a _memory_ of something, or someone, that wasn’t anymore.

 _Most of the folks in your memories are aware they’re, well, memories,_ Cipher had explained him once. _The more recent the memory, or the more often you think about it, the more aware they are. Old memories you don’t think about at all, though? They think they’re real. Plato said this funny thing about some suckers watching shadows on the wall of a cave once - thinking them real because they didn’t know any better. It’s a bit like that. Old memories and flesh-and-blood dumbasses alike._

Shadows on the wall, Ford thought, and almost laughed.

_You put up one hell of a show for me, Cipher. Kept me believing all along._

“But _why_ can’t they hear me?” Bill pressed on, unaware of his musings as he was unaware of the fact no memory would hear anything outside of its door. “I called out loud! Real loud!”

Despite himself, Ford found himself smiling faintly. “I have no doubt,” he said.

“And I could _hear_ them,” Bill went on, throwing up his arms. “There were people in there and someone was reading a story about a white whale, so why didn’t they hear me and also what’s a whale?”

“Er… that would be a large aquatic mammal,” Ford said,choosing to answer the question with the easiest answer. Or at least, he assumed it to be easy. Not Bill, if the way he blinked up at him was of any indication.

“Oh. What’s a mammal?”

Ford ran a hand through his hair, trying to think of a way to put it simply. "Well, that's any vertebrate within the class Mammalia, and…” he paused when Bill blinked up at him again in absolute confusion, and decided it would be quicker to change subject. “... So. You want to see the Third Dimension, correct?”

_More shadows on the wall you’ll believe are real._

Bill’s eye immediately widened. “Can you take me there?”

_Can you tell me how Bill Cipher came to be?_

It wasn’t much of a plan, but he supposed it was worth a try. Bill Cipher’s mind had to be vast beyond his comprehension, billions of years of knowledge and memories, and it would be best to avoid going about it blind if he could help it. Perhaps the boy could tell him something useful before he set off, if he gained his trust.

_Deceive him._

_He deceived me first._

“Yes,” Stanford said, and stood. “Follow me,” he added, and began walking towards a certain door, one he knew would lead to a memory that--

“Hey! Hey! Wait up!”

_Taptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptap._

Ford paused and turned to see that the boy was running, trying his hardest to keep up with him, but of course it was a lost battle: he was little over five inches tall, and it took him several comically short steps to cover as much ground as just one of Ford’s own steps.

“You’re huge! It’s not fair!” Bill whined, coming to stop next to his right foot and reaching to grasp his trousers. “Pick me up!”

For a moment, Ford was almost tempted to just lift his foot and crush--

_Cipher_

\-- the boy, but instead he held back a sigh and picked him up, letting him slide on his coat’s breast pocket. Bill grasped the hem of the pocket with both hands and peered around. Not that there was much to be seen, with fog everywhere Ford dared not lift, but he still seemed amazed, especially when Ford resumed walking.

“I’ve never been this tall! Why are you so tall, huh… what’s your name?”

“Ford.”

“... What, really?” the child asked, something not too far away from disgust plain in his voice, and Ford frowned.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“It’s lame. You’re _huge_ and you’ve got _color_ on you and you’re from the _Third Dimension_ and you know _things_ , and your name is _Ford?_ Seriously? What kind of name is that for a… a… whatever you are?”

Ford held back a sigh, thinking back of Stan’s initial  incredulity at the mere idea of an all-powerful demon called _Bill._ “... Well. My actual name would be Stanford.”

“Oh. That’s a bit better. I guess,” the boy conceded, then, not to be outdone, “My _actual_ name is William,” he informed him. “I just don’t really like it much.”

“You don’t? How come?”

“Because… uh…” At the edge of Ford’s field vision, the child’s form flickered briefly in what looked like another burst of gray static. “I don’t remember,” he finally said.

_A damaged memory of Bill Cipher._

_An old one he hasn’t thought of in a long, long time._

Useless, a part of Ford’s mind whispered, and it was probably true, but it was also his best shot at learning more about Cipher before venturing in the vastness of his mindscape, the nightmarish place where he had eyes everywhere. If it gave him any useful information, it would have been worth it. If not, it would only be a minor delay, because he _would_ unravel the mystery that was Bill Cipher, one way or another.

It wasn’t like he was going anywhere.

“It’s quite alright,” Ford said, and paused in front of a door and reaching for the handle. “Are you ready to see the Third Dimension?”

_Are you ready to watch the shadows on the wall?_

He was.

* * *

“Please please _please_ don’t wake up, I ain’t ready to explain this.”

To Stan’s relief, his good luck held up: as he staggered inside the house, carrying McGucket’s limp body, he gave no sign of being about to regain consciousness. He was out like a light, and didn’t stir even when Stan leaned him on the couch. He have been about to drop him, really - would serve him right for leaving Stanford on his own when things got ugly - but the guy’s wrist was broken and he didn’t want the pain to startle him into awareness should he land on it or something.

Once that hooded cloak was off, Fiddleford McGucket was precisely the opposite of creepy: with clothes that screamed ‘nerd’ from a mile away, he was just a scruffier version of the guy he’d seen smiling at the camera next to his brother. Well, in the picture he also didn’t have a huge bump on the side of his head. Or a purple, swollen mess in place of a normal wrist.

… He probably should take care of that somehow, he guessed, before tying him up for all of their sakes. Good thing he’d learned how to make a reasonably good cast out of scraps of metal, strips of fabric and chewing gum sometime in… huh. Had it been in New Mexico or Colombia?

He didn’t get to think it over any further, because the moment he closer to the stairs to fetch what he needed he could hear something coming from outside - muffled screams.

_Ford. Christ, it’s been two hours and he’s still screaming._

It took Stan a conscious effort not to bolt upstairs to check on him, and he was only able to hold back because he knew he couldn’t hurt himself - that _Bill_ guy couldn’t hurt him - and because he couldn’t go anywhere until he’d made sure McGucket couldn’t leave and call the police on him when he awoke.

With a muttered curse, Stan tore himself away from the stairs like a recovering alcoholic passing the window of a wine shop, went to grab all he needed, and went back to tend to McGucket.

The sooner he had that wacko fixed up and tied to a chair, the sooner he could go check on his brother. Just to stay on the safe side.

* * *

_I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe._

On some level, Bill knew it wasn’t true. He could force air in and out Ford’s lungs - in and out, _in and out, in and out, I didn’t remember breathing was such a pain_ \- but said lungs felt constricted, and it was as though he couldn’t get enough air into them. Not with that stupid nose filled with disgusting mucus and that damn gag wedged between his teeth, not while he couldn’t stop screaming.

_Stop screaming stop screaming stop screaming._

_LET ME OUT OF HERE! I CAN’T STAY HERE! LET ME OUT!_

He needed out of Ford’s mind before it doomed them both. He needed out of there - out of those constraints, out of that cage, out of that pathetic mortal body with its pitifully defective eyes that wouldn’t stop watering - but there was no leaving until Ford awoke, or until he was able to pass out.

He had tried not breathing so he could faint, go back into the mindscape at talk with Ford, because at least one of those two damn twins had to _listen_ to him, but he had been unable to keep it up. It had been terrifying, everything darkening and the cage closing down on him, and his chest had hurt and burned in the worst ways;  in the end he had it found himself drawing in convulsive breaths, unable to override that stupid body’s primeval instinct to breathe.

_Let me out of here let me out let me out let me--_

“... Stanford?”

* * *

What could be seen of Stanford’s face through the helmet was far from a pretty sight. There was no blood and he wasn’t hurt, and that was good, but that was where the good news ended.

Stanford’s face was reddened and wet with tears and snot. Stan could see the veins on his neck bulging, his chest heaving and, most of all, the look he shot him through tears. It was desperate. _Pleading._ It made him ache to run to the cage, somehow force it open, get all that crap off his brother and promise, _swear_ him that everything was going to be all right. And he did take a step closer, then another.

But then he saw his eyes, and stopped in his tracks. Those eyes again, yellowish and with a slit cat-like pupil - what the hell was _wrong_ with them?

 _That is what the eyes of someone possessed by Bill look like,_ Stanford’s voice echoed somewhere in the back of his mind.

_It’s impossible. It’s got to be some kind of infection._

_An infection that comes and goes in hours?_

His hesitation didn’t escape the _thing_ in the cage, because the next moment the pleading glance turned into something else entirely, a look of pure hatred and impotent fury that made Stan’s blood run cold. He let out a noise that might have been a furious howl has it not been for the gag, and violently threw himself against the bars.

The clang of the helmet hitting metal startled Stan out of his thoughts, and he scowled down at the… the _thing_ in his brother’s skin.

“Keep tryin’, Mr. Mighty Demon,” he snorted, making quotation marks in the air with his fingers. “You’re outta luck,” he said, and turned his back to him, to his cry of anger, to leave the room and lock the door behind himself. He rested his back against it, closing his eyes and trying to fight back the dread clawing at his throat.

For all of his mocking the notion of _a demon named Bill_ actually being trapped in Stanford’s mind, there had been a moment there when their gazed had met that he had almost, _almost_ felt like he could believe it. But it couldn’t be, of course. There could be no demon: a second personality was the most logical explanation. It would explain everything.

Except those _eyes._

* * *

“... I’m not entirely sure you eye is _supposed_ to do that.”

Stanford’s words were entirely lost to Bill, whose pupil had grown from a slit to a black hole taking over almost all of his sclera as he stared at the scenery before them, just beyond the door to one of Ford’s fondest memories.

Glass Shard Beach.

It was nothing special as far as beaches went, to be entirely honest, and many people would consider it a downright health hazard due to the debris that were often found abandoned in its sand; after all, it had that name for a reason. But it had been home, the backdrop of his earliest adventures with Stan - and to someone who had never even seen color in his life all of it, from the ocean to the sand, from the blue sky above to the seagulls crying out in the distance, had to seem something extraordinary.

“Put me down!” Bill shrieked, trying to climb out of his pocket. _“Put me down put me down put me down!”_

“Hey! Careful!” Ford snapped, barely catching him in mid-air when he just tried to throw himself out of the pocket. He lowered him on the sand, and Bill immediately let himself drop on his back, making angels in it and laughing like… like… well, like a maniac.

Familiar, that.

“I’m never ever ever ever gonna go back ever,” Bill declared, eye fixed on the sky above, squinting against the sun.

“I see. About your world, I’d like to ask--”

“What’s that?” Bill piped in, lifting a tiny black hand. It looked like he was more eager to ask questions than to answer any; after all, as far as he was concerned, Ford was the one with answers. How the tables had turned, indeed.

“That would be the sun. Don’t stare directly at it,” Ford warned.

“Why not?”

“It will hurt your eye. Would be a shame to go blind with so many things to see, wouldn’t it?”

“... I guess,” the child said, frowning, and he did grudgingly tear his gaze away. He sat up, tiny black legs splayed in the sand, and took another look around. Gray as he was, he looked amazingly out of place.

“And _that?_ What is that?””

“That is the ocean.”

“Oh! I know what that is! That’s where _whales_ are!”

The corners of Ford’s mouth quirked upwards for just a moment. Moby Dick had been one of his favorite books as a child, and one of Stan’s favorites to listen to him reading. It had action and adventures at sea, and even back then Ford has found himself fascinated by Captain Ahab, who had chased his enemy to the ends of the sea and--

_And destroyed himself, doomed his crew, to take revenge against his enemy._

The smile seemed to freeze on Ford’s lips, but the boy - _the enemy_ \- seemed not to notice. He was too taken by what he was seeing.

_Too taken by the shadows on the wall._

“Yes,” Ford heard himself saying. “The ocean is where whales are.”

 _The mind is where monsters dwell,_ he thought, and just watched in silence as Bill stood and began running towards the waves, somewhat unsteady on the sand. He reached the shoreline, let out a shriek when water touched his foot, and ran back - only to go after the retreating wave again, and then run back when it moved towards him, over and over.

The most dangerous being Stanford had ever met was _playing chase with the waves,_ and he was starting to wonder if he wasn’t just dreaming all of it, after all.

“So, uh. Is _that_ who I think it is?”

Ford flinched and turned to see Stanford and Stanley Pines, age ten, staring up at him with identical confused frowns. They were small, good grief, so small. He couldn’t remember ever being that short.

“... In a manner of speaking,” Ford found himself saying. His younger self seemed to pale, but Stanley grinned.

“I can go drown him if you want,” he said, cracking his knuckles. Or at least trying to, because the attempt produced no noise, causing him to frown. “Aw, shoot. Why can’t I do that when it would sound cool?”

“There is no need to drown him,” Ford said quickly. In the back of his mind, he marvelled at the degree of awareness those two had: not only they were aware of who he was, aware of where and what they were - they also knew who _Bill Cipher_ was. For parts of such an old memory, it was rather surprising.

_Not really, though. It is a memory I think about a lot._

“Is he like us?” his younger self asked, voice guarded. “What is he doing here?”

“Yes, he is like you. He seems to have wandered out of Bill’s own mind,” he said, fervently hoping he wouldn’t have to find out what _else_ could wander out of that monster’s mind if given a chance to. “He’s… unaware of that, however. He believes he’s in the real world. He should keep believing as much, at least until--”

A sudden howl caused him to trail off, and all three of them to turning to see that Bill had fallen eye down in the sand and was now rubbing his eye with both hands, screaming. Ford blinked, and watched him lifting himself up to stagger towards the water and… and…

“No, wait, don’t--!”

Too little, too late: a moment later Bill had splashed the seawater in his eye to get the sand out, and his howls doubled in volume. Beside him, young Stanley crossed his arms, tilting his head on one side.

“He’s dumber than the other one,” he stated, and there was nothing Ford could retort to that.

Not that he had any time to.

_“STANFORD FILBRICK PINES!”_

The children didn’t heard that furious shriek, but Stanford heard it perfectly - a call for him alone to hear. Cipher’s call.

_Does he know he’s here?_

Ford shot a glance at Bill, the _small_ one, to see he was still sitting in the sand and rubbing his eye. He had heard nothing either, and it was a relief. “... I have to go now. I’ll be back - I have questions for him,” he said, and crouched, putting a hand on both boys’ shoulders. “See if you can get him to say something about this world. Keep him busy and, most of all, keep him in here,” he said. “Say _nothing_ that might reveal this is not the real world. Can you do that?”

“Sure.”

“Yep!”

With a somewhat wistful smile, Ford ruffled their hair. “You make a great team,” he said, and stood. “... Ford?”

The memory of his younger self looked up at him, gaze serious behind thick lenses. “We’re _not_ the same person,” he said. “Wouldn’t be possible in the real world.”

“Smart boy,” Stanford said. “Perhaps it would be safer telling him a fake name.”

“Like Nerd,” Stan piped in.

“Right, like-- hey!”

Ford chose to ignore that. “Stanley?”

“Yeah?”

“Do _not_ try to drown him,” Ford said, and the boy just grinned up at him.

_“SIXER! I KNOW YOU’RE IN HERE! WE GOTTA TALK AND WE GOTTA TALK NOW!”_

… Very well then. They would talk - but well away from that memory, and well away from the kids.

All three of them.

* * *

There was a kid, somewhere. He called out in the dark. A familiar voice, or so he thought, muffled as though it was reaching him from underwater. He couldn’t quite place it.

He couldn’t _remember._

_“When are you coming back?”_

_“Soon. I have… things to do.”_

So many things to do. It was important. It had to be.

He just didn’t remember _why._

_It’s all right. Best not to. Shhh. Sleep._

_Forget._

Light, sudden, coming from behind him.

_Don’t turn. Don’t look._

And then shadows, shadows on the wall.

_There is nothing else to see._

He tried to turn, he _tried,_ but he found he couldn’t do it. A voice somewhere, one he recognized as his own, soothed him.

_Don’t. Never look back. It is unseen._

He listened. He did not turn. He settled to watch the shadows playing before him, content, at peace. Whatever was behind his back did not concern him.

_It is unseen._

* * *

“Nnnhhh…”

The groan was barely audible, but it was enough to make Stan bolt upright on the couch, bloodshot eyes snapping open. He immediately looked at the chair he had tied McGucket to, his hand grasping an empty bottle for good measure - more out of habit than because he thought that unarmed, tied-up twig of a guy could do anything to harm him.

_Another blow to the head like that, and your main problem might suddenly be how to hide a body, you knucklehead._

The Voice of Reason that echoed in his head ever once in a while had the annoying tendency to sound all the world like his father’s, which made him glad it spoke up very, very rarely, but either way it was enough to make him relax his grip on the neck of the bottle. He wasn’t gonna need it, anyway: the guy was still out cold. He let out another groan, sounding a lot like a whine, and shifted on the chair - as much as his restraints allowed him, anyway - before falling silent and still again.

With a long sigh of relief, Stan dropped back down on the couch and listened. There was some water dripping somewhere, likely the kitchen, and a few creaks here and there, but aside from that he could hear nothing… and especially not Stanford. He must have fallen asleep, or passed out from exhaustion. At least he would get some rest and boy, he was going to need it. And so did he, Stan thought, closing his eyes once again.

Except that now he couldn’t keep his thoughts from turning to his brother’s eyes, what they looked like when… when…

Abruptly, Stan sat up once again and reached to pick up something he had discarded on the floor - the hooded robe Nerdy had been wearing. He stared down at it, stared at the symbol on the hood.

 _The Blind Eye,_ Stanford had called it - a red X over an eye that stared at him with a cat-like slit pupil.

_That is what the eyes of someone possessed by Bill look like. If they’re anything like this, then Bill is possessing me._

It was a load of crap, of course. There was a perfectly logical explanation for all of Stanford’s symptoms, and it surely wasn’t demonic possession.

_Can you explain the eyes?_

_I..._

_It is unseen,_ the man had said. As he stared down at the symbol, Stanley Pines wished with all his might that he could do just that - unsee what he had seen, ignore that one unexplainable occurrence and stick to his perfectly reasonable theory of what was really going on.

Those _eyes._

_Explain._

_I can't._

_Unsee._

_I can’t._

* * *

“Sixer! SIXER!”

Bill’s voice seemed to echo in the fog for a few moments before being swallowed by it, like he had been yelling into a black hole. How long had he been yelling now? Ford had heard, he must have heard! Where _was_ he?

_He must listen! Somebody must listen to me!_

Panic tried to rear up its head, but Bill refused to let that happen. His form didn’t suffer from it the way that stupid human body did - at least it had been useful in the sense that it had allowed him to finally pass out and return to the Mindscape - but it was still an unfamiliar sensation, one he _hated._

“Stanford! Come out! I know you can hear me! STANF--”

“Cipher.”

Ford’s voice was quiet and cold as ice. Bill immediately turned to see him standing a few feet from him, eyes narrowed and arms crossed. He didn’t say anything else but, even if he had planned to, Bill wasn’t gonna give him enough time to. There was little time as things were.

“You gotta let me out of here!” he snapped, rushing to over a scant inch from his face. Ford didn’t even flinch.

“No.”

“You don’t get it, do you?” Bill asked, and gave a long, somewhat hysterical laugh. “You - hahaha! - you think you’re so clever, and you haven’t figured it out? Our mindscapes are merging! Do you have _any idea_ what that means?”

For a moment, the only movement on Stanford Pines’ face was an almost imperceptible tightening of the lips. “I suspect you’re about to tell me,” he said drily.

“It means,” Bill snarled, his eye even closer to Ford’s face, “that you either let me outta your mind, or you lose it. You may not have noticed while you were snooping around, Fordsy, but my mind is _nothing_ like yours. There are memories of a trillion years! The knowledge of the multiverse! Do you think your little limited brain can hold it, IQ? Do you think it can hold up for long? ‘Cause it can’t!” he snapped, throwing up both of his hands and forcing Stanford to step back, his eyes widening and jaw slackening for a moment before he regained control. Bill saw the slip in his demeanour, and pressed on. “Your tiny little brain is going to _implode,_ Six Fingers! You’ll go crazy before you know it, and not even the _fun_ kind of crazy! How does that sound, huh? Screaming about things no one else can see? Drooling and babbling stuff no one else can understand? They’ll lock you up, that’s what they’ll do! Keep you in a padded cell with some damn straitjacket on, just how you like it, but not just for the night! Until the day everything will just shut down - some sad wacko who had an aneurysm to put him out of his misery! Is that how you want to end up, Stanford? IS THAT IT?”

The last words came out as a scream that was far closer to hysteria than Bill would have wanted it to sound, but at that point he was beyond caring. Stanford stared back at him, and worked his jaw a couple of times before speaking.

“How long?” was all he asked.

“Before you go crazy? I’m givin’ you three weeks tops. Maybe a year before you snuff your own damn self out and drag me with--” Bill trailed off, realizing a moment too late that he had made a grave mistake in choosing his words; the sudden darkening of Ford’s gaze was enough to tell him that. Because he had already tried that argument before, and it had only gotten him one response.

_I’m taking you down with me. You’re not the only one who means what he says, Cipher. Don’t you remember? From now…_

“... Until the end of time,” Ford said quietly.

_No, no, no, no, NO!_

“You can’t _do_ this to me!” Bill screeched, and reached to grasp the collar of Stanford’s shirt. “Get that plate outta you skull! Let me out! This doesn’t have to happen! I can make you a _god,_ Stanford! I can--”

“You’re insane,” Ford cut him off, staring at him straight in the eye and making no move to get him off himself. “And I’ll take any kind of insanity over yours any day. I will never set you free into the world again,” he added, and smiled. “I saw what you did to your world. How does it feel like, Cipher? Seeing your end nearing and being powerless to stop it?”

 _“Shut up!”_ Bill snapped, his grip on Ford’s clothes clenching. “You don’t know the _first thing_ about that world! But hey, wanna know what _your_ end would be like? You’d die a babbling lunatic! Everybody will think--”

“Not everybody,” Ford cut him off, and Bill stared back at him for a few moments, uncomprehending. Then realization hit him, and he laughed. He let go of Ford’s shirt and hovered back, laughing and laughing. He couldn’t help it. It was hilarious - it was just so _hilarious!_

“What’s so funny?” Stanford asked coldly, and Bill gave another laugh.

“Geez, Sixer, you are clueless!” he wheezed, reaching up to wipe tears of mirth from his eye. Because it was mirth. It _had_ to be mirth. “Kinda cute, really. Your brother will know? As if! Your brother doesn’t know a thing!”

“Stanley will know the truth--”

“The truth? You want to school me about truth? Here’s the _truth,_ genius - _Stanley already thinks you’re crazy,_ you pathetic skin puppet!” Bill shrieked, and it gave him at least some satisfaction to finally see Ford flinch, confusion crossing his features before he could recover. And Bill had no intention to give him _any_ chance to recover. “He doesn’t think I’m real! Can you believe that?” he laughed, but once again his laugh had an edge of hysteria to it.

_I’m not figment of a mortal’s imagination! My name is Bill Cipher! The All Seeing Eye! I am--_

_Real. I am real. Real. Real._

“He doesn’t…?”

“Mullet thinks - hahahahah! Hear this out, Sixer - he thinks you made me up! Ain’t that a kick in the pants?” Bill laughed again at the astonishment Ford was unable to hide.

“You’re lying!”

“Am not! I _never_ lied to you, Fordsy. I just left things vague enough for your overactive imagination to fill in the gaps with whatever you wanted to hear. That is true and you know it,” he added, and took a moment to savor his scowl before going on. “Oh, not that he believes you’re acting, but he _does_ think I’m some kinda second personality, you know. He thinks you’re a _wacko,_ my old friend, the kind they wheel off to the closest asylum! He doesn’t get it - doesn’t get _you,_ like everyone else! This _world_ doesn’t get you, and you would _die_ to keep it how it is!”

“ENOUGH!”

The scream that left Stanford was loud as a gunshot and only made Bill laugh harder. Finally, it was someone else’s turn to scream and be met with open mockery. “Hahahaha! Aww, why so angry?” he asked, reaching to ruffle Ford’s hair and immediately dodging his attempt at hitting him. His face was reddened with fury and shame, eyes wide with disbelief, and Bill was loving every second of it. “I mean, you’re all ‘trust no one, trust no one’, and now you’re surprised he doesn’t trust you? Why should he, anyway? You stood by and did _nothing_ when your father sent him away! Threw him out like garbage!”

Ford shook his head, taking a staggering step back. “I…” he began, only to trail off when Bill threw up his hands and spoke again.

“Oooh, right! Your _dream_ school!” Bill laughed again. “Seems fair. You had a vision of what your life was gonna be, and he took it from you. And what’s a brother worth when you have a _vision,_ Stanford?”

“That… it was not my fault! I was angry, and he--”

“He sabotaged you, didn’t he?” Bill cut him off, and hovered closer, eye right before his face. “He wanted to clip your wings so you’d never carve out your own path in the world! Yeah, come to think of it, why call for him in your time of need? Why trust _him_ of all people? He double crossed you once! Who says he’s not gonna do the same aga--”

“SHUT UP!”

Stanford threw himself forward, arms stretched out, but Bill had known it was coming and moved out of the way. Ford fell heavily, and he just laughed.

“Hahah! Is that all, Sixer? You’re gonna have to try harder than that to--” A sudden, harsh ringing noise caused him to trail off and wince. “Ugh, that stupid alarm! Couldn’t you at least pick something less annoying like, say, nails on  chalkboard?”

There was no answer, but of course there woudn’t be. That was how it worked, after all: the alarm rang, and Stanford awoke.

Leaving him alone in the middle of a thick fog, with no one to laugh at as the sands of time kept running through his fingers.


	7. Triads

When Stanford opened his eyes, he could see nothing for several moments. Part of it was, of course, due to the fact he was not wearing his glasses; and then there was the fact his eyes were full of tears. Had it been him to shed them? Had it been Bill?

Did it even matter?

The alarm stopped blaring, and a clack followed, telling him that the time lock had opened. Normally, that would have been the moment he stood, however painfully, and stepped out of the cage - it was almost fascinating, how quickly that had become his own version of normality - to check the damage in the bathroom’s mirror. However, now he could do none of those things: unable to move, he could only wait for Stanley to come upstairs and free him.

The thought of his brother was like a stab in the gut. Was what Bill had told him true? Did Stanley truly believe him crazy?

_He thinks you’re a wacko, my old friend, the kind they wheel off to the closest asylum! He doesn’t get it - doesn’t get you, like everyone else!_

No. No, it couldn’t be. Stanley had to believe him, _someone_ had to believe him.

_I mean, you’re all ‘trust no one, trust no one’, and now you’re surprised he doesn’t trust you? Why should he, anyway?_

Ford squeezed his eyes shut, trying to chase the echo of Cipher’s voice from his mind. He should be paying it no heed to begin with, and he had been foolish to react as he did. All the reason he had to think Stanley didn’t believe him was Cipher’s own word, and he had learned the hardest of ways that he could not, under any circumstances, be trusted.

He had lied, of course. He must have. He wanted to keep him paranoid, keep him isolated, keep him weak. He was hoping he’d crack and let him go, that was plain - but if he thought that would be enough, he had another think coming. He refused to yield. If his _other_ claim was true, if his mind was truly meant to collapse, then he’d welcome madness and death as long as it meant he’d take that that monster down with him. He’d cling to him to the bitter end.

_Until the end of time._

The sound of steps reached his ears, causing the morbid thought to fade. Ford opened his eyes and turned to the door to see Stanley walking in, yawning and stretching. “Hey, Poindexter. You look… er. Good?”

It wasn’t very convincing, but Ford may have appreciated the effort if it wasn’t for Bill’s taunts still echoing somewhere in the back of his mind. He said nothing - not that he could have even if he wanted to, with the gag still between his teeth - and looked up as his brother opened the cage and knelt next to him. He took the helmet off Ford’s face and rid him of the gag; Ford was still licking his dry lips when Stan put the glasses back on his face, and cleared his throat in a way that immediately got his attention. That wasn’t some casual throat-clearing: it meant that he was about to say something, and that it would be important. Their father used to do that all the time.

“So, huh. Before I get this stuff off you, there’s something I should tell you,” Stanley said, rubbing the back of his neck beneath the unruly mane of hair. “There’s someone downstairs.”

For a moment, Stanford was certain - absolutely certain - that Stanley had to be referring to the law enforcement or to mental health professionals, that he must have called them as he slept to take him away and lock him up.

_The kind they wheel off to the closest asylum!_

_You’ll go crazy before you know it, and not even the fun kind of crazy! How does that sound, huh? Screaming about things no one else can see? Drooling and babbling stuff no one else can understand? They’ll lock you up, that’s what they’ll do!_

_He wanted to clip your wings so you’d never carve out your own path in the world! Yeah, come to think of it, why call for him in your time of need? Why trust him of all people? He double crossed you once! Who says he’s not gonna do the same again?_

Dread clawed at his chest, rendering him unable to speak for a moment, and he was still struggling to remind himself that it was _Bill_ he shouldn’t trust for any reason when Stanley spoke again.

“It’s… like a guest. Except that I kinda brought him here. And he’s sorta tied to a chair.”

_… Wait. What?_

“Wait. What?” Stanford croaked, blinking up at his brother. Stanley shrugged a bit awkwardly, still rubbing the back of his neck.

“I just wanted to talk to him, but he went and tried to shoot me with this weird gun that made this odd flash and... I sorta had to break his wrist, so… hey, don’t worry, no one saw anything!” Stanley added quickly, holding up his hands as soon as he noticed the stunned expression that had to be showing on Ford’s face.

_Fiddleford. Good grief, he’s talking about Fiddleford._

“No one knows he’s here! He woke up and tried screaming, but I put a sock in it - like, literally put a sock in it, but it’s an almost clean one, honest! So anyway, now he’s downstairs and--”

“Stanley,” Ford said quietly, cutting him off. “What did I tell you _not_ to do?”

“Uh… trust anyone?”

“The other thing.”

“Go in the basement?”

“The _other_ thing.”

“Look, if this is about that red dress with the blue shoes again it was _one time,_ I was drunk and--”

“The Blind Eye, Stanley!” Ford snapped, lifting himself in a sitting position despite his bounds. “For heaven’s-- I told you to stay away from anything related to the Blind Eye!”

“Oh. Right.”

“And what did you do?”

“... Sorta kidnapped its creator.”

“I can’t believe you, Stanley! Of all stupid things, you… you… wait. How did you find him?” Ford asked, blinking. Really, how _could_ he do that? Ford had been looking for him for weeks and was unable to locate him, while Stanley had been there for only a couple of days, with no knowledge whatsoever of the town.

Before him, Stanley shrugged. “Easy. I asked.”

_“You what?”_

“Asked the local diner’s owner if she’d seen the guy. She also fed me cake. Not half bad, Anyway, turns out he was renting her cousin’s place. Honestly, how did you think you could find him without even asking arou--”

“You _drew attention_ on us!”

“Hey! As far as she knows I was just looking for a friend of yours!” Stan snapped back, crossing his arms. “And I told you, no one saw me taking him away. You wanted to talk to him, right? Now he’s in your living room. Quit complainin’.”

Stanford closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath. If anything, Stanley was right on one thing: he had wanted to find Fiddleford and talk to him for quite a while - and now he had a chance to do just that, he supposed. He could ask Fiddleford what in the world he was planning to do, and why. He could resume the argument with his brother another time.

“Untie me,” he gritted out. “And let’s go see what my college buddy has to say.”

* * *

“So, your name is Stanley and _his_ name is Nerd.”

“Yup! You got it! ‘Cause he _is_ a nerd.”

“What’s a nerd?”

“He is.”

“Right.”

Stanford - the _young_ Stanford - sighed and rolled his eyes. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

Stanley grinned back at him. “I think it does. You too, right, Billy?”

The triangular being before them - tiny and gray, so utterly unlike Bill Cipher’s vibrant yellow - frowned for a moment, arms crossed, before replying. “... Yeah, guess it makes sense.”

“See?” Stanley said with a shrug, and Stanford had to hold back from rolling his eyes. When it came to tell what made sense and what did not, _any_ version of Bill Cipher was likely the very last individual whose opinion would matter.

“And where did the big one go? The one with the dumb name?”

“He… huh. He had a few things to sort out. Will be back soo--”

“What do you mean, a dumb na-- ow!” Stanford yelped when Stanley stomped on his foot and turned back to Bill with an exaggerated grin.

“Until he’s back, we’re gonna show you around,” he said, crouching down on the sand to be closer to Bill’s same eye level. Not that he got _that_ close: he was really, really tiny. “You wanna look around, I bet! There’s a cool cave not far from-- hey, ow!” he yelped, rearing back when Bill reached up to pinch his nose. “What was that about? Why’d you grab my nose?”

“Nose,” Bill repeated, as though trying out a foreign word. “Is that how you call it?”

“What, don’t you have noses in your world?”

“Do _I_ look like I have one?” Bill shot back, and Stanley grunted, conceding the point. Stanford crouched down as well, reaching for his bloc notes and the pen.

“So. Does everyone look like you in your dimension?”

“Nu-uh. Well, not males. The women _do_ look all the same - they’re all Lines,” Bill said, frowning a little. “Not us. I only have three sides, but there are more shapes, too. The more sides you have, the higher you are, until you have so many you become a Circle,” Bill said.

“So _you_ could become a Circle?”

“No, are you stupid?” Bill rolled his eye, clearly unimpressed with the question. Says the one who doesn’t know what noses are, Stanford thought, but bit his tongue and let him keep talking. “We gain a side with each generation. Except Triangles. A Square comes out in the end, but it takes a lot more than one generation of Regulars to make it happen.”

“Regulars as in…?”

“Equilateral, like me. There are Isosceles, too, but they’re the lowest of all and it takes them _forever_ to produce an Equilateral. I was born from Isosceles,” Bill added, and puffed out what, for the lack of a better term, Stanford supposed he could think of as his chest. “Makes me rare, you know. And special!”

“I’ll bet,” Stanley muttered next to him.

Stanford elbowed him quickly before turning his attention back to Bill. “Sure. Now, about--”

“Enough about my world. It’s boring. I want to know all about yours!” Bill cut him off, lifting himself up to on his toes - not that he seemed to have actual toes - to take a closer look at their faces. “Tell me _everything_ about noses!”

Stanford and Stanley shared a quick glance. “Well, we use them to breathe, and smell, and--”

“And nerds like Nerd also use it to hold up glasses,” Stan piped in, and reached to take the glasses off Stanford’s face. He handed them to Bill. “Here, try ‘em on!”

Stanford narrowed his eyes, partly in annoyance and partly because he needed to do so in order to see a little more clearly, but the annoyance faded quickly enough while watching Bill holding up the glasses - he needed both hands to do it, and staggered a bit under the weight - and let out a whistle when he looked through one of the lenses.

“Whoa! It’s all fuzzy!”

“That’s because you don’t need ‘em. St-- Nerd here sees like that _all_ the time without them!”

Bill blinked up at them, and frowned a bit. “Oh,” he said. “That’s gotta suck. Is the big one like that, too? He’s got stuff like this on his… huh...”

“Dumbface,” Stanley supplied helpfully. Stanford elbowed him again.

“Face. Just face,” he corrected. “And yes, he does. It’s fairly common in our world,” he added, reaching to take his glassed back.

“So you have two eyes and neither works well?” Bill asked, scratching his upper angle. “That’s… dumb.”

“... Can’t argue with that,” Stanford conceded. “Now, speaking of--”

“What about those handles?”

“Huh?”

“Those,” Bill said, lifting a tiny hand to point at their heads. “The things on the sides of your… faces, right?”

“Ears,” Stanley said, and grabbed Bill by his sides to lift him up. He sat back in the sand and let Bill sit on his shoulder. “Here, take a look - hey! Hey! Don’t pull! My Ma already does that enough. And don’t stick your hands in it!”

“What’s inside? I can’t see anything!”

“Well, there’s… huh. Hey, Brainiac, what’s inside the ear? Wax and what else?”

Stanford found himself chuckling and sat down next to his brother, turning his a page in his bloc notes. “I’ll make a drawing,” he said, and felt Bill hopping from Stanley’s shoulder onto his own, and then climb up his head. “So, this is the ear canal, all right? A little bit further down there’s this cone-shaped membrane called--”

“Oh! A cone!” Bill exclaimed, settling down in Stanford’s hair while peering down at the notebook. “I _know_ what cones are!”

He sounded incredibly excited, but Stanford supposed it made sense: he’d probably be elated to recognize something familiar if he were thrown into a world where nothing was. His older self had felt like that, too, while travelling across dimensions.

Beside him, Stan straightened himself all of a sudden, like he often did when something occurred to him. “Hey, good idea! We could use a cone! As in, ice cream. An ice cream cone.”

“What’s an ice cream?”

For a few moments Stanley stayed still and silent, staring at Bill with eyes wide in disbelief and horror in equal measure. “... Wait. You don’t _know_ what ice cream is?”

“Nu-uh.”

“You never _had_ any ice cream?”

“Well, don’t think I did. I’m not sure-- whoa!”

Stanley stood suddenly, snatching Bill up from Stanford’s head, and held him before his eyes. They were wide and positively gleaming. “Let me show you the _world_.”

* * *

Bill Cipher hadn’t set foot in his own Mindscape in a long, long time.

He had no reason to, to begin with - it was his own mind, already fully available to him, with no need to shift across different planes of existence to access to it. That had to be the very first time he went in there like that in at least… one billion years? Two? Fifty? Something like it, he supposed.

But now he didn’t have much choice, did he? It was either Stanford’s mind, or his own. Nowhere else to go. And honestly, he’d rather stay away from Sixer’s mind for a bit: he’s never been stuck in someone’s mind for so long without interruptions, and it was starting to do things to him. Giving him thoughts that did not, could not belong to him - and all because of Sixer’s dumb twin!

_Prove you’re some kinda demon and not a second crazy personality Stanford got after hitting his head or something._

What a ridiculous notion, that. Trust humans to come up with ridiculous ideas even when the truth was right before their noses. He was _not_ a figment of anybody’s imagination. He couldn’t be. He was real, his existence outside Stanford Pines’ mind was a _fact,_ and his own Mindscape was there to prove it.

_Unless it’s just another part of Stanford’s mind. Unless it’s all fantasies and made-up memories. Unless I’m one of them._

The thought was sudden as it was chilling, like a spear of ice through his core, and Bill Cipher refused to acknowledge it. He was real, and he refused to doubt it. He had never been a creature of doubt, and he wouldn’t change it now.

_I am real. I am real. I am real._

He repeated it over and over like a mantra, until it echoed through every corner of his Mindscape - something so extensive that, for sure, couldn’t possibly be the product of a limited mind’s imagination.

_I am real._

The certainty, which had wavered ever so slightly for a moment, returned - solid as rock and utterly unshakeable.

And yet, he suddenly felt uncomfortable in his own Mindscape as well.

* * *

Stanley hadn’t been exactly sure what he’d been expecting would happen when Stanford and McGucket found themselves in the same room, but complete and utter silence was probably not on top of his list.

McGucket had tried to start screaming the moment he had awakened, when Stanford’s absurdly loud alarm clock had rung out - something that thankfully had covered his first scream, giving Stan enough time to improvise and stuff the first thing he could find in the guy’s mouth to shut him up. Namely, a sock.

 _Whose_ sock Stan wasn’t entirely sure, but it wasn’t relevant anyway.

When he had gone upstairs to free his brother, McGucket was trying to cry out through the makeshift gag and to break free from his bounds; by the time they both walked downstairs he could clearly hear he was still struggling. Until they walked in the living room, of course, until McGucket saw them and feel silent and still, eyes wide, like a trapped animal. It made Stanley think of a lamb waiting for the fatal blow in the neck.

Whatever it made Stanford think of, he didn’t say: his brother just stood there, still and silent, and stared back at his old colleague. His former assistant. His _college buddy,_ as he had called him.

To be totally honest, neither of them looked good: Stanford looked just slightly healthier than he had been when Stan had first walked in, but he was still nothing short of a walking scarecrow. As for McGucket the dishevelled clothes, sweaty skin, reddened eyes and overgrown stubble made him look hardly any better off. Both of them were utterly, painfully unlike the grinning pair of nerds the the photograph Stanley had seen.

 _He saw something beyond the portal,_ his brother had said. _Something he wanted to forget._

“... Huh. So. Let’s just have a chat, okay? I’m gonna get that sock outta your mouth. No screamin’, ‘cause it would be useless anyway. No one here to hear. Well, except us,” he said, and pulled the sock out of the guy’s mouth.

He had fully expected a scream despite the warning, but he got nothing like it. Instead, McGucket coughed a couple of times before licking his lips and staring at them, clearly terrified. Stan heard his brother draw in a deep breath.

“Let me handle this,” he said before turning to McGucket. “... Fiddleford. I am sorry we meet again in these… circumstances. I know that I have made mistakes. I have ignored all of your warning, and doubted you - though to be fair you did use that gun of yours on me and--” he trailed off and cleared his throat. “Anyway. It's good to see you. Also, I… might be able to do something for your wrist? The one who broke it and then hit you in the head with a brick is my brother Stanley, by the way."

McGucket’s eyes shifted on him. Stan waved briefly, mentally noting that his brother still sucked at that whole ‘casual conversation’ thing. “Hiya.”

“... Hello,” McGucket said with a slight nod, looking rather dazed, then he made a brave attempt at a smile.  “L-look, if... if it’s money you want… whoever you are…”

That was enough to make Stanford step back as though he had just been smacked across the face. “Wha-- no! It cannot be!” he exclaimed, and pushed past Stan to grasp McGucket’s shoulders. "Fiddleford, it’s me! Stanford! Stanford Pines! You can't have forgotten who I am! You can’t have let yourself get to that point!”

McGucket drew in a shaky breath and looked away. “I’m… I’m sorry, but I really don’t know--”

“C’mon, that’s bullshit!” Stan blurted out without thinking, causing both men to wince and turn to him. “You can’t just forget a guy like that! You’re bluffin’!”

Stanford sighed. “I am afraid it’s possible. The gun you saw is designed to erase memories and--”

“Oh, ya mean the one he tried to use on me when he thought I was you?” Stan said, causing his brother to trail off and McGucket to stiffen, a low whining noise coming from his throat. “That’s gotta be the reason why you tried to shoot me before I even said ‘hello’, right? ‘Cause you thought it was _Stanford._ So don’t give us that bad memory crap. You know who you’re talking to, college buddy.”

Stanford’s eyes shifted back to McGucket, who immediately shut his own. “It is unseen,” he muttered under his breath, shaking like a newborn deer. “It is unseen. It is unseen. It is--”

_Thud._

Stanford fell on his knees suddenly, causing him to recoil and stop chanting, and Stan to rush by his side.

“Wha-- Stanford! Are you okay?”

“I am sorry,” his brother murmured, eyes shut. “Fiddleford, I am so sorry. This is all my fault. You were right all along - I was a puppet to a _monster._ I should have listened--”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” McGucket cut him off, his breathing quickening. His eyes darted to the door. “I… I don’t know who you are, or why this ape came and… my wrist, it hurts, _it hurts,_ I want to forget… my gun, where is the gun, untie me now, WHERE DID YOU PUT MY GUN, I’LL BE ALL BETTER ONCE I FORGE--”

“Where’s your wife?”

McGucket’s scream trailed off as though someone had flipped a switch. He stared down at Stanford, as though not comprehending.

“My… wife,” he repeated slowly.

“And your son. Tate,” Stanford pressed on. “In California - do you remember them?”

“I…” McGucket hesitated, then slowly shook his head, causing a shiver to run up Stan’s spine. Was that possible? Could that guy really have just forgotten he had a wife and a kid back home?

“Why aren’t you with them? Why are you still here?”

Something suspiciously close to a sob shook McGucket’s frame. “I have to do _something._ You wouldn’t listen. I must help. I help people forget.”

_… He does what now?_

The guy’s blabbering made pretty much no sense to Stan, but it seemed to hit Stanford like a blow. “You… what? You can’t be serious! Is this what the Blind Eye is about? Fiddleford, _please,_ tell me it’s not true! Tell me--”

“I AM HELPING THEM!” McGucket screamed, squeezing his eyes shut. “You only listened to that _monster,_ you put us all in danger, and I’m trying to help! Why am I here? _Why_ did you bring me here?”

Stanford pressed a hand against his eyes. “Because--” he began, only to trail off. He pulled the hand away and blinked a couple of times before turning to look at Stan. “... That is a good question, really. Stanley, why did you invite him over?”

McGucket blinked down at him in turn. “... He didn’t really _invite_ me, you know.”

“Fine, if you want to discuss semantics,” Stanford muttered, and stood. “Stanley, why did you kidnap him?”

Stan rolled his eyes, lifting his hands. “Whoa there, let’s not jump to conclusion. I brick a guy in the face and tie him to a chair, and suddenly _I’m_ the bad guy?” he protested. McGucket and Stanford shared a quick glance.

“... Yes? I reckon that about sums it up?” McGucket finally said, and Stan frowned at Stanford.

“Hey, did you hear what he just said? Say something!”

Stanford raised an eyebrow. “To be entirely fair, I can’t fault him. You _did_ kidnap him.”

“Look, things got outta hand. I just wanted to talk, okay? Talk. You’re the one who pulled that weird gun on me, Nerdy. It was all self-defense.”

“You _kidnapped_ me!”

“Okay, so, about seventy percent of it was self-defense and the rest was sorta blind panic.”

McGucket opened his mouth to say something, but Stanford got there first. “Why?”

“Huh?”

“Why did you want to talk to him?”

“Well, why do you think? I had questions about this whole mess, and--”

“Questions I already answered,” his brother cut him off, and stepped forward, causing Stan to step back in turn. His voice was suddenly sharper, his eyes narrowed. “Why would you need to ask him as well?”

_Oh, hot belgian waffles._

“Because…” Stan began, racking his brain for a believable answer. “Well, you said yourself that you didn’t know what the whole Blind Eye mess was all about, so--”

“Do you believe me, Stanley?”

Stan had expected the question; what he had not expected was the strain in his twin’s voice, the way he braced himself for the answer like one would for a physical blow. “I-- of course! It’s not that I think you’d lie! I--”

“Do you think I’m crazy?”

“H-hey now--”

“Do you believe I’m raving? That Bill Cipher is just a product of my--”

“DON’T YOU SPEAK THAT NAME! NEVER SPEAK THAT NAME!” McGucket’s scream caused both of them to recoil. They turned back to him to see he was frantically shaking his head, his breath leaving him in short gasps. “It is unseen. It is unseen. It is unseen!”

“Fiddleford…”

“I can’t unsee,” McGucket choked out, and looked up again. Behind the glasses, his eyes were bright and feverish. “I can’t forget. It doesn’t matter how many times I pull the trigger, he comes back, he _always_ comes back!”

“He?” Stan found himself repeating, his mouth dry. For the second time in the space of a few hours - _those eyes!_ \- the thought that Bill Cipher might be something more than a second personality or some kind of deluded fantasy resurfaced in his mind, suddenly more convincing despite the utter senselessness of it all.

And what McGucket said next seemed yet another nail in the coffin of sanity.

“The triangle,” he said, shaking. “The Beast with just one eye! That… that… no! No, no, please, I don’t want to remember!” He hunched forward, straining against the bounds, and if his broken wrist hurt he showed no sign of it. “Give me my gun! Please! I want him out of my mind, I--”

“... Your mind is safe, Fiddleford.”

Stanford’s words were little above a whisper, but they were enough to make the room fall into complete silence. McGucket stared at him as Stanford reached at to lightly knock on his head. The metallic sound that ensued caused him to recoil, eyes widening.

“No,” he said, very quietly. “Stanford? Ford, don’t tell me - you didn’t--?”

“It was supposed to keep him out. It ended up trapping him in,” was the reply. Stanford lowered his hand, and shrugged, giving his old friend a forced smile. “But maybe it’s for the best. He’s never leaving. This ends with me. It is my burden to bear; I should have never let it become yours. I am sorry.”

“What… no, wait, it can’t… we can… you!” Fiddleford McGucket suddenly turned to Stan. “My gun! The memory gun! Do you still have it?”

Stan frowned, reaching to take that weird gun out from beneath his jacket. “This? Yeah. What’s the deal with--”

“I will not work, Fiddleford,” Stanford said, taking the gun from Stan’s hands. He looked at it for a few moments, then sighed and set it down on the nearest table. “The plate that keeps Bill from leaving will also keep the memory gun from working on me. And removing it would mean giving that monster the means to escape - something I will not do.”

The silence that followed felt heavy as an anvil, and Stanley had no idea what he should even think. He just stood there, feeling incredibly dumb and frustratingly confused as his brother the that madman tied to the chair stared at each other. The realization that they shared something - unpleasant experiences or not - he was not part of made something in his chest ache.

_I used to know everything about Stanford. Everything. And now I know nothing._

“Go back home, Fiddleford,” Stanford finally spoke again in a tired sigh. “There is nothing left to do for you here. Bill is trapped. You can leave and put all of this behind you for real.”

McGucket swallowed. “But you--”

“It doesn’t matter. Go back to your family.”

“You can’t do this on your own!”

“Hey!” Stan snapped, causing both of them to wince and turn to him. “He ain’t alone! I’m right here! And I ain’t letting some… whatever that guy _is_ take him away from me. So you can leave him again - that’s what you did last time, ain’t it? Leave when things got tough?”

“I-I…”

“Stanley, it’s not his--”

“Well, go ahead and do it again. He’s in good hands,” Stan snorted, crossing his arms and silently challenging them to say otherwise. Finally, Stanford gave a weak smile.

“... He is right. I am in good hands,” he said. “Just… forget all about this, Fiddleford. I’ll untie you now, all right? We’ll do something about your wrist. Then you’re free to go.”

As Stanford went to untie him, just as he had said, Stan watched McGucket closely. He saw his eyes turning to the gun - memory gun, wasn’t that how they’d called it? - on the table, and stay fixed on it for a few long moments before he turned his head with a clear effort, looking away from it. Just to be safe, Stan grabbed it and put it back under his jacket.

McGucket didn’t try to look for it again.

* * *

_“Do you think I’m crazy?”_

_“H-hey now--”_

_“Do you believe I’m raving? That Bill Cipher is just a product of my--”_

_“DON’T YOU SPEAK THAT NAME! NEVER SPEAK THAT NAME!”_

“Ugh, _seriously?_ Saved by the nervous breakdown. Go figure.”

With a snort, Bill let his eye roll back into the usual position and scowled at the plate of pancakes Ma Pines had put in front of him while he was busy looking out through Stanford’s eyes. Kinda funny how that memory of her didn’t even question his presence in her kitchen and just tried to feed him whenever she spotted him. Not that he had any complaints.

“Can you believe just _how_ dumb your kid is? He doesn’t think I’m real,” Bill said, glaring up at the man sitting at the head of the otherwise empty table. “Which I _am,_ thank you very much.”

“Oh, of course,” Filbrick Pines said, turning a page. His voice was even and uninterested as ever. “You’re as real as I am.”

Bill scoffed. “You’re a memory. You ain’t real at al-- wait. What are you trying to say?” he asked, glaring up. The impassable expression changed for just a moment, the slightest quirk of lips beneath the mustache.

“Precisely what you heard.”

_No. I am real. I am real._

“Shut it, old man! You’re raving - here _and_ in the real world, really. Early onset dementia. Did you _know_ that?”

Far from impressed, Filbrick Pines’ memory shrugged. “No. But I know something else.”

“Oh yeah? And what would that be?”

“Real or not, it doesn’t matter. You’ve already lost.”

Bill blinked up at him, trying to discern any kind of expression on that stony face and finding none. “What the-- what makes you think that?”

A moment of silence, and the man glanced around as though to make sure no one was nearby to listen before speaking. “You’re up against my sons,” he finally said, and glanced down at the newspaper once again. “That is all I need to know.”


	8. Countdown

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is probably the last chapter I'll be able to write for this until the new year. So, uh, sorry for the semi-cliffhanger at the end.

The first, true stab of pain hit him shortly after he was done treating Fiddleford’s wrist.

His multiple PhDs had made Stanford a doctor, but not a  _ doctor, _ so all he could do was bandaging it as well as he could so that he could go to the hospital without suffering any additional damage; not an easy task, considering how swollen the wrist already was after being left unattended through the night.

“You’re definitely going to need someone at the hospital to see this,” Ford said, trying to ignore the way his old friend’s eyes kep wandering across the room to avoid meeting his gaze. “I… well, I suppose you did not come here with your own car.”

Fiddleford’s eyes flickered towards Stan’s general direction, and his brother had the good grace to look embarrassed. “Well… no. He was on the backseat of your car.”

“I reckon I should be glad you didn’t put me in the trunk,” Fiddleford said drily.

Stan snorted. “Remind me again  _ who  _ tried to shot  _ who  _ with  _ whose  _ gun?”

“Tried to shoot  _ whom, _ Stanley. Grammar,” Ford said, and his brother rolled his eyes. 

“Okay, get this. Guess  _ whose  _ hands are going to be around  _ your  _ neck if--”

Whatever Stan was about to say next would be lost to Stanford: the next moment something exploded in his head, the worst bout of pain he could remember ever experiencing. It felt like  _ something  _ was rushing to fill up his skull like a tidal wave, to the point of making it burst from the inside like a ripe melon. 

_ You may not have noticed while you were snooping around, Fordsy, but my mind is nothing like yours. There are memories of a trillion years! The knowledge of the multiverse! Do you think your little limited brain can hold it, IQ?  _

He tried to reach for his head, but his arms refused to respond. Something fell on the floor, clattering. The small table he tried to hold onto fell with him. There was a thud, knees hitting the floor, and a scream. 

He couldn’t tell whether it had come from him or from someone else. He couldn’t even tell if it had been real or just in his head. All he could tell was that his head was a mass of agony, that his body wouldn’t respond, that the room swirled around him and the light hurt his eyes. 

_ Your tiny little brain is going to implode, Six Fingers! _

He closed them, and hit the ground.

* * *

Something was not right with his Mindscape; Stanford could tell as much the moment he opened his eyes, the instant after closing his  _ real  _ ones.

All around him, the fog was still there, even thicker than before. Instinctively, Ford knew that perhaps it wouldn’t lift even if he willed it to - but what truly worried him was something else: the pulsing, multicolored lights he could see appearing and then fading through the mist. It reminded him of Bill’s Mindscape, of the unknown colors swirling all around it, there one moment and gone the next. And, if he listened very closely, he could hear the same thing he had heard then - screams in the distance, and murmurs in languages he couldn’t understand. 

All things that did not belong in his mind. All things that, he knew, would drive him insane in the end. Cipher had not lied, he was certain of it. Not on that. It was only a matter of time before his mind bent under the pressure, and then...

_ Until the day everything will just shut down - some sad wacko who had an aneurysm to put him out of his misery! Is that how you want to end up, Stanford? _

Of course he did not. He’d sooner die by his own hand, and he had been about to, until Stanley had showed up. And then.... then he’d found he could no longer do it. Not until he’d gone through all of his chances. 

Well. His chance. He only had  _ one  _ as far as he know, and it was a long shot, but if what had just happened told him something, it was that he was running out of time. If it was his only shot, he ought to make it  _ count, _ and quickly. 

Stanford Pines stood and, after focusing for a few moments to figure out where he was, he moved quickly toward the door leading to his memories of Glass Shard Beach.

* * *

“Stanford? STANFORD! Answer to me! Wake up!”

From what little he recalled of first aid, Fiddleford was rather certain that what Stanley was currently doing - lifting his unresponsive brother by the shoulders and shaking him like rag doll while screaming his name - was not among the advised steps to deal with someone who suddenly lost consciousness. He almost said as much, be words died in his throat for two reasons: first, he didn’t  _ remember  _ what the correct way would be. Second, he was distracted by something else: the handle of the memory gun poking out of Stanley Pines’ pocket.

The fingers of Fiddleford’s left hand, the good hand, twitched. It would be so easy, now that that  _ ape  _ was giving him his back. Just grab the gun, use it on him and then on himself. He could forget all that had happened, he could forget--

_ Where’s your wife? And your son, Tate. In California - do you remember them? _

… Did he? He ought to. And there  _ was  _ something, if he focused hard enough.

_ When are you coming back? _

_ I don’t care what you’re doing! Tate’s birthday is next week and you’ll be here, or so help me-- _

Had he gone? He couldn’t remember. He didn’t think so. How long had it been since that phone call already? Had the birthday already passed? When had Tate been born, anyway?

… What was his wife’s name?

“Stanford! Stanford, c’mon -  _ please _ …!”

Stanley Pines’ voice rang out again, breaking up slightly on the last word, and caused Fiddleford to recoil, snapped from his thoughts. He tore his gaze away from the handle of the memory gun - and it was hard, it really was, like refusing water during a drought - and took a tentative step forward. “Listen, he needs help and we should… wait, stop  _ shaking  _ him - for all we know you’re making things worse.”

Stanley turned to face him so quickly that for a moment Fiddleford feared he’d drop Stanford and lunge for him, but he did not: he just glared at him before snapping. 

“Oh, sure - ‘cause that’s what everyone expects me to do, right? Make things worse!”

“I-I’m just saying…”

“Stanley Fuckup Pines! Whatever I do you can  _ bet  _ it’s the wrong thing!” With a guwaffing noise, he cradled Stanford’s still body in his arms and rested his forehead on his. “I’m trying, all right? I’m trying, but I ain’t the smart guy and I don’t know what to  _ do. _ All I can do is lie and cheat and brick people in the face, and  _ none  _ of it is helping.”

For a moment Fiddleford’s eyes shifted back to the memory gun, but just then Stanley’s whole frame shook and he tore his gaze away. “Get a grip on yourself,” he said, honestly not knowing whether he was talking to Stanley or himself. At the moment, it seemed sound advice for both. “We need to take him to the hospital,” he said, getting himself a loud snort as a reply. 

“If they hear him talkin’ about demons in his head, they’re gonna lock him up for good.”

_ The Beast with just one eye. _

Something tried to claw its way back to surface in Fiddleford’s mind, but he forced it back down and walked up to Stanford’s body. He knelt and reached to feel his pulse with his good hand; it was there, strong and regular. It made him breathe a little more easily, and he gathered the courage to look at Stanley in the eyes. It was hard to do: he had been trying to avoid people’s eyes for months, now. Just in case.

“He would never reveal a such thing to them. And neither will I.”

“He told  _ me  _ everything. He sounded crazy.”

“Because he trusts you, I reckon. Not so with hospital staff.”

“You don’t get it. If he passes out and wakes up again, then sometimes it’s not him. He… those eyes--”

A shudder shook Fiddleford’s entire frame. “Don’t,” he gritted out, his voice cold and clipped. “Don’t tell me about the eyes.”

Stanley Pines stared at him, and he could see comprehension dawning on his face. “You have seen them, too, haven’t you?”

“I… have seen…”

“You met him, right? Bill Ciph--”

“SHUT UP!”

He hadn’t meant to scream, but scream he did, and it caused the other man to fall silent, his mouth shutting to abruptly that he could hear his teeth clicking together. Fiddleford swallowed, and had to draw in a long breath before he could speak. “Just… don’t. Let’s take him to the hospital. Should anything happen - if he speaks too much - we can undo it. You have the gun.”

Stanley Pines blinked at him. “... What, you think I should break out my brother from the hospital, gun blazing, if things go wrong? ‘Cause I’d be up for that.”

This time, it was Fiddleford’s turn to blink. “You…  _ don’t  _ know what that gun is for?”

“... Shooting people, I guess? Look, I didn’t really have the time to ask while you were tryin’ to use it on me, so no, I have no clue--”

“Nnnhh…” 

The noise that left Stanford was feeble, but it was enough to make Stanley fall silent and immediately turn his full attention to him. Nothing else happened: Stanford stayed unconscious and motionless. Still, that small noise was all that his brother needed to decide.

“... Okay. Hospital. For both of you,” he said, and stood, pulling Stanford up on his back. He refused help to carry him outside, and Fiddleford didn’t insist. 

There wasn’t much help he could offer with a broken wrist, after all.

* * *

The beach was deserted, and that was enough for Stanford to fear the worst. His worry only grew when he called out - first for the boys, then for Bill - and received no answer. There was no one, and nothing in sight except for the swing set and, not too far away, the Stan O’ War.

He’d find them there, they  _ had  _ to be there. He refused to think that something may have gone wrong, that Bill may have found them. He knew that he wasn’t supposed to be able to permanently harm them - memories like them would simply respawn in moments - but nothing that was going on in his mind made sense and, for all he knew, the old rules may very well have gone out of the window. Maybe he could destroy them, after all. Maybe he had. Maybe--

“Uuuugh…” The groan reached his ears when he was only a few steps away from the boat, causing him to tense. Then there was another, and this time he could tell it came from  _ behind  _ the boat. Heart hammering in his throat, Stanford ran up to it and then around it, and--

_ … Wait.  _

Ford stopped in his tracks to blink down at the two boys lying down on the sand at his feet, groaning and holding their stomachs - which, he was rather sure, bulged quite a bit more than they normally would. Especially Stanley’s. That, along with the chocolate around their mouths and over their shirts, gave Ford a good idea of what had happened.

It was nothing he hadn’t lived through already, after all, a long time ago. More than once.

“Ice cream?” he guessed, the sense of alarm leaving him along with a sigh. His younger self groaned. Stanley lifted one arm to give him a thumbs-up.

“Worth it,” he muttered. “Tooootally worth it.”

“If you say so. Where’s Bill?” Ford asked, turning to look at young Stanford - who, in turn, gestured towards the ice-cream carton on his left. 

“Was making angels in it.”

“... In the ice cream?”

“Bill.”

“Good point,” Ford conceded, and crouched down to peer in the carton. It was almost completely empty, the little ice cream left in it having melted, so Billy was resting on his back in a sticky puddle - and sleeping, apparently. His eye had turned into a mouth, and he had his thumb firmly stuck in it. It was, simultaneously, creepy and oddly cute. A combination Ford had seen more times than he could count in Gravity Falls, to be honest.

“Has he told you anything relevant about his world?” Ford asked quietly, turning back to the boys. Stanley lifted himself up on his elbows. 

“Yes! Horrible things!” he exclaimed, eyes wide as saucers, and for a moment Ford felt as though his heart had stilled. 

_ I saw what you did to your world. How does it feel like, Cipher? Seeing your end nearing and being powerless to stop it? _

_ Shut up! You don’t know the first thing about that world! _

What had Bill’s dimension truly been like? What horrors had taken place there? What had he revealed to the kids?

“What kind of--”

“They don’t have ice cream!”

Ford blinked. “They don’t have ice cream,” he repeated. “I wouldn’t say that’s--”

“And they don’t have jelly beans, either!” Stanley added. All right, Ford supposed  _ that  _ was a point against Bill’s dimension, but still not something especially relevant, unless Bill thought it go be a good enough reason to destroy it. Which was, disturbingly enough, entirely possible.

“I see,” he finally said, and glanced at his younger self, who was - rather slowly - sitting up. “Anything else?”

“Not much,” young Ford admitted, pulling a bloc notes from under his jacket. “Mostly things about women being Lines and men different shapes - here, look. He said that shapes from Squares onwards gained one side each generation until they became Circles, and that’s the highest they could get. But with Triangles it was kinda diff--”

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!” 

Stanford and his younger self both winced and turned on time to see Bill jumping out of the ice cream carton, eye wide, and start running down the beach - still emitting that long, continuous shriek and leaving tiny footprints in the sand. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”

“Ow! My ears!” young Stanley protested, making a face. “What’s wrong with him?”

Instead of replying, both Stanfords lowered their eyes on the mostly empty carton of chocolate ice cream. Ford sighed, and reached up to rub his temples. “From now on,” he said slowly, “any kind of food with any infinitesimal amount of caffeine in it is strictly off limits. Stanley…?”

Stanley was off running after Bill before he was even done speaking.

* * *

“Okay, so. Run this by me again. The gun is made to erase memories outta people’s brains.”

Sitting rather awkwardly on the passenger seat, pressed as closely as he could against the car’s door, McGucket nodded. “Yes.”

“Huh,” Stan said, not quite knowing what else to add. It wasn’t the first crazy thing McGucket had told him through the journey - if he were to be believed, all of the creatures Stanford had documented in his journal were real - but somehow it was the hardest one to truly believed. “You do realize this sounds crazy, ri--” Stan began, only to trail off when he hit a ditch, causing the car to become airborne for a few moments before landing again, making the car’s suspensions creak. 

“Look at the road!” McGucket yelped, holding the broken wrist close to his chest and flattening himself even more against the car’s door.

“I am looking,” Stan snapped, not even caring that it was the most obvious lie. “So, where do I have to turn for the hospital? Here?”

“No, it’s… another couple of miles, and then on the left. You can’t miss it.”

“Gotcha,” Stan muttered, and pressed down on the gas pedal. 

“Slow down!”

“Dream on! I gotta take Stanford--”

“Nnnnhhh…”

The groan caused Stan to immediately wince and slam his foot down on the brake. The car came to an abrupt stop; McGucket was spared more pain by the seatbelt, but Stan hadn’t bothered to put it on and slammed against the dashboard before bouncing back and turning to look at the backseat, where they had put his brother.

“Stanford? Can you hear me?” he asked. He was aware, dimly, of the fact McGucket had his hands pressed against his face and kept muttering - “Not the eyes, not the  _ eyes _ …!” - to himself, but he hardly noticed. He could only stare as his brother shifted, groaned again, and opened his eyes a fraction. 

Yellowish eyes, with a cat’s slit pupil. 

_ Bill. _

Stan tensed, the hair on the back of his neck standing on end, and readies himself for anything - screams, thrashing, even a fight. But none of it happened: those eyes just stared into his, and there was a failed attempt at scowling before they dimmed and rolled back into their sockets. The eyelids fell shut, and Stanford’s head dropped back down on the backseat. 

Out like a light, both of them.  _ Again. _

Stan probably shouldn’t have felt relieved by the notion but, holy Moses, he _ was.  _

“... False alarm,” was all he said, turning back to the road and pressing on the gas pedal again. “So, two miles down the road, right?” he asked, and was speeding towards the hospital before McGucket could even utter an answer, deaf to his cries to slow down.

* * *

That, Ford concluded as he closed the door behind himself to step back into the fog, had been a huge waste of time. What he had gathered was that Bill’s former dimension had to be a dreadfully dull place, colorless and bound by strict social rules and classes, but nothing more than that. It might mean something, of course, and certainly explained Bill’s hatred for it, but at the moment there was little he could do with that knowledge alone.

He had been so used to Bill’s near constant answer-giving that he honestly hadn’t expected a memory of his to be too eager to ask question to waste any time  _ answering  _ any. After Stanley had caught him on the beach at he had calmed down at least enough not to scream constantly, he had begun throwing questions at Ford like a gun-machine. 

“How do ears work? And noses? What color is this? How deep is the ocean? Why can’t I walk on it? And why aren’t there any whales? And why don’t your eyes work well? And why--”

The very few times Ford had managed to work in a question of his own he had either been ignored or just gotten something vague - like a ‘it’s boring stuff’ - as an answer before he resumed asking questions.

To be entirely fair, Stanford couldn’t fault him. He had been the same when travelling across dimensions, too taken by what he was seeing and learning to bother walking much about home. Not to mention that nostalgia would get the better of him if he did, and then… then…

Wait. What was he even  _ thinking? _

Ford stopped in his tracks, blinking at nothing and trying to put some order to his thoughts. Where had all that come from? He had never been in another dimension in his life: the closest he had gotten was the brief glimpse through the tear in space-time the portal’s activation had caused. But it had been nothing more; he had never been there, never gone through the portal. He was sure of it.

… And yet, at the same time, he was not. He could recall things, if vaguely, worlds he had seen. Things that did not belong to that dimension. Things he had been through. They were not quite like memories, but more like glimpses, like he was watching something that had happened to him in another universe, another reality...

_ Like Cipher can do.  _

Realization hit him like a bucket of cold water. He could recall things that had really not happened because his Mindscape was merging with that of someone who  _ could  _ look into other realities. An in another reality  _ that  _ was what had happened - he had gone through the portal, seen other worlds. That, too, was part of the amount of knowledge his mind was already staggering under. How long before it became too much?

… How long before he forgot which reality he was  _ really  _ living into? Was  _ that  _ what Bill had warned him about?

_ You’ll go crazy before you know it, and not even the fun kind of crazy! How does that sound, huh? Screaming about things no one else can see? Drooling and babbling stuff no one else can understand? They’ll lock you up, that’s what they’ll do! _

_ How long? _

_ Before you go crazy? I’m givin’ you three weeks tops.  
_

Stanford whimpered, reaching up to grasp his head, and stepped back. His back hit one of the doors that littered his Mindscape, but it wasn’t that that startled him out of his dread: it was the rattling sound of  _ something  _ shifting beneath his foot. Chains.

Ford bent to pick them up, examining the open padlock still attached to them, and then turned to the door right by him. Had the chains and padlock been keeping it closed? But why? With a frown, Stanford Pines reached to push down the door’s handle and opened it.

One look at the memory beyond was all he needed. It was enough for him to _ understand.  _

The way Billy’s entire form flickered and glitched when asked specific questions whose answer he couldn’t remember finally made sense. He had assumed the boy to be a defective memory, and he had been right, but he hadn’t realized what the implications were until then - he hadn’t realized he had gotten it all wrong. 

Billy wasn’t missing memories because he was defective. He was defective  _ because  _ he was missing memories. And he was missing memories because something, or someone, had locked them away like Fiddleford had done with him, and with himself. At some stage of Bill Cipher’s unfathomably long existence, someone - perhaps even Cipher himself - had tried to destroy some of his memories. 

If there was something Cipher was so desperate to hide even from himself, it had to be important - important enough to make it worth finding that monster’s own locked door, and see what lurked beyond it.

* * *

Worried as he was that Stanford would have one of those episodes - or, to put it another way, that Bill Cipher would decide to show up - in front of the doctors, Stan hadn’t thought about the possibility McGucket might rat him out and accuse him of assault until he had already been led away by a nurse to take a look at his wrist. 

Well, it looked like all he could do at that point was hoping that he wouldn’t: he had enough questions to answer as things were.

“What about the metal plate in your brother’s skull? It was clearly installed recently, but--” 

“It was, uh. An accident. While skiing.”

The doctor’s eyebrows went up almost to her hairline. “The nurse you spoke with previously said you had mentioned a mountain lion attack.”

Stan barely held back from slapping himself in the forehead and, instead, scoffed. “Well,  _ duh. _ He was attacked by a mountain lion while skiing. I mean, where would you go skiing if not on a mountain?”

“Well--”

“And it’s called  _ mountain  _ lion for a reason, ain’t it?”

“... All right. Either way, what I was going to say is that there is no mention of that surgery on his medical records. That is unusual, and--”

“It happened while he was abroad.”

“Oh?”

“Yep. In, uh, Nepal. They got the best mountains, like… er… Everest, and… and that other one. You know, in… Maya something.”

“Himalaya? I don’t think there are mountain lions in--”

“Look, so maybe it was a snow leopard, okay?” Stan snapped. “Dunno, don’t care. Still a big cat. How’s this gonna help my brother? Are you a doctor of a vet?”

The doctor stared at him for a moment, then she sighed and turned her gaze back on her notes. “Fine. Aside from the plate in his skull, the x-ray showed nothing out of the ordinary. We thought it possible that the plate was putting undue pressure on his brain, but it doesn’t seem to be the case. As you said your brother is stressed as of late…”

“You could say that, yeah.”

“... Then I don’t believe there is reason to think it was anything more than migraine, if an especially nasty one. We’d keep him for the night just to be absolutely safe, but…” she paused with a shrug, and it was Stan’s turn to sigh. 

“He said he’s not gonna stay.”

“Yes. He’ll be leaving once he’s signed the necessary paperwork - please do wait for him he--”

Stan scoffed. “Oh, yeah. The stuff that says you take no responsibility if he drops dead on the way back home,” he said, only to regret it a moment later when she looked up at him with eyes that told him clearly there was at least a part of her that wished she could will him into self-combustion.

“Mr. Pines, if a patient refuses hospitalization, forcing him is beyond our power. We offered medical advice and he refused to take it. Unless there are grounds for us to forcefully keep him here - unless the authorities deem him to be a danger to himself or others - we simply cannot do anything. Do  _ you  _ believe we should?”

_ Do you think I’m crazy? _

_ H-hey now-- _

_ Do you believe I’m raving? That Bill Cipher is just a product of my-- _

“No,” Stan said quickly. “No, no, of course not. That would be nuts. Heh. He’s a pain, y’know, kind of a know-it-all, but not  _ that  _ much of a pain. But hey, if you could give him a  _ tiny  _ little lobotomy, just to even the playing field a bit…”

The doctor didn’t bother acknowledging his words: she just gave a quick nod and turned to leave without another word. Stan heaved a long sigh while watching her retreating back, the he dug into his pockets for some change, hoping that it would be enough to pay for at least a coffee. 

Fat chance: all that he dug out of his pocket were a paperclip and a peso. 

“Really should have taken Nerdy’s wallet,” he mumbled, letting himself fall back on the seat in the waiting room. Truth be told, he had taken McGucket’s wallet after bricking him in the face  old habits die hard - but he had forgotten somewhere back in Stanford’s place, so it wasn’t going to be of much help. No coffee for him until he was back home, apparently. 

… When had he started to think of that place as home?

The sound of someone clearing his throat somewhat awkwardly caused him to look up. McGucket was there, arm into an almost blindingly white cast, and Stan fund himself giving something halfway between a smile and a grimace. “Hey. Glad you didn’t call the police on me. Want me to write ‘get well soon’ on that?”

“A ‘sorry’ would be more appropriate.”

“Forget about it. I wanted to talk and  _ you  _ tried to wipe my brain clean,” Stan snorted, then glanced up at the bruise on the side of McGucket’s face. “So, huh. What did you tell ‘em?”

“I fell on a brick.”

Stan couldn’t hold back a laugh, and even McGucket was smiling a bit when he sat across him. “Hah! Did they buy that?”

“Not likely,” he said, and reached in his pockets, only to frown. “I must have lost my wallet.”

“... Huh. I think I found it.”

“ _ Found _ it.”

“Yeeeeah, well. Had to search you, just in case. It’s on the kitchen table back home. Didn’t take any money from it.”

“Yeee-haw,” McGucket said drily, pulling his good hand out of his pocket. “You took my tobacco as well, I reckon?”

“Didn’t even touch it, honest. Do you seriously chew that stuff?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t look the type.”

“Grew up in Tennessee.”

“Ah.”

There were a few moments of silence, then Stan sighed, reaching to rub his neck. “Look, I ain’t gonna apologize for not letting your fry my brain, but I, uh. I’m sorry for dragging you back into this mess. I just didn’t know what to do. The stuff Stanford said sounded crazy - I mean, a  _ demon  _ in his mind, I just…”

“Didn’t believe it.”

“Well--”

“You thought Stanford had gone insane.”

“I--”

“He did,” McGucket cut him off, his voice suddenly a lot sharper. He reached up to rub his eyes beneath the glasses. “Lord have mercy, he did. But not because he saw things that were not real - it was the opposite. It was real, all of it. And he didn’t stop. He wouldn’t stop working on the portal, even when I tried to tell him it was consuming him. He wouldn’t listen to me, even when I told him he should destroy it. He only listened to _ him. _ ”

“You mean B-- er. The guy you asked not to mention?”

A shudder. “Yes. He never told me about him, but I knew there had to be someone, or something. And he trusted that monster more than he trusted me,” he added, and lowered his hand to look at Stan. A quiet, lingering surprise and something not too far away from  _ hurt  _ was etched in his features. “We were friends, but he didn’t  _ trust  _ me.”

_ Ho-okay. I might have accidentally been horsing around--  _

_ This was no accident, Stan! You did this! You did this because you couldn't handle me going to college on my own! _

The memory hit him like a punch in the gut, and Stan found he had to swallow before speaking. “... I think I get what you mean.”

McGucket gave no sign of having even heard him. “When I… I saw what I  _ saw, _ I could take it no more,” he went on, and Stan had to make an effort not to ask what the hell  _ was  _ it that he had seen. At that point, he was sure it would result in just another nervous breakdown and no real answer. “I just wanted to forget it all. It was my fault, too.”

“You didn’t know--”

“I suspected,” Fiddleford cut him off, his voice shaking. “And I stayed. I helped him build the portal and… and I used the memory gun so that we could get people to help us building it more quickly and then  _ forget  _ they had helped _. _ I used it on your brother, too, when he found out. I just thought that the sooner that portal was completed, the sooner he could get his life back. But I was wrong. I should have burned it all to the ground when I had a chance. And now look at us,” he added, gesturing towards himself. “I can’t even remember my wife’s name. I don’t know how long has it been since I last  _ spoke _ to my son. And Stanford has that monster trapped in his head. It’s going to be the end of him, you know,” he added, glancing back at Stan. “And there isn’t a thing we can do. The memory gun is useless on him.”

_ I hold the universe in my mind, Mullet. The multiverse, really. I hold the knowledge of billions of years, the secrets of countless worlds long gone and times that have yet to come. It is too much, Mullet. Your brother’s brain, no matter how big by your standards, cannot handle it. Not for so long. I could sit down and be a good boy, and he’d still suffer. It’s killing him, ain’t it? Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed _

Stan nearly shuddered at the memory, and refused to acknowledge the cold dread that had settled in his chest. The way Stanford had collapsed earlier, the way he had screamed... no, it couldn't be. He couldn't and wouldn't accept it.

“Hey now, there’s gotta be a way--”

_ “Stanley!” _

“ _Gah!_ Holy-- Stanford! Are you trying to give me a heart attack?” Stan protested, jumping on his feet and turning. Stanford gave no sign of having even heard him, and instead put both of his hands on his shoulders. He still looked horribly tired, with dark shadows under his eyes, but had a manic look about it that Stan didn't like at all.

“I need you to tell me something, Stan. It’s important.”

“Yeah, yeah. What did the doctors say? How’s your--”

“Do you  _ believe  _ me, Stanley?”

The question was so sudden and direct it caused Stan to trail off, and words to die in his throat. “I…”

_ Those eyes. _

_ The Beast with just one eye! _

“... Yes,” Stan heard himself saying, and he realized the truth of it only as those words left his mouth. He stared straight at Stanford’s eyes, those wonderfully normal, familiar brown eyes just like his own. “I believe you.”

For a moment Stanford stayed silent, staring at his face as though trying to read the truth in it - then finally, slowly, he smiled. It was the widest smile Stan had seen on his face until then. His grip on Stan’s shoulders tightened for a moment before he spoke again.

“And do you _trust_ me?”

_ Trust no one, Stanley. _

_ Except you, right? _

_ Fiddleford trusted me, and look how that turned out. _

_ We were friends, but he didn’t trust me. _

_ This was no accident, Stan! You did this! _

_ Trust no one! _

But it was rubbish, all of it. Old crap that could be forgotten about. Dumb mistakes he wouldn’t repeat. There was only one answer he could give. Just one, and it was the truth.

“Don’t be an idiot. Of course I trust you.”

Stanford’s grip on his shoulders lessened, but his eyes stayed fixed in Stan’s own. The smile was gone, but in his voice there was something that had been missing until that moment - hope, plain as day.

“There is something I need to do. But… the countdown has started, and I’m not sure I can make it on my own. I’m going to need help. Your help,” he finally said, then, “will you follow me, Stanley?”

That, too, had only one correct answer. It felt kinda nice knowing what that was, for a change.

“To the ends of Earth.”


	9. Real

“No no no no NO! I am real! _I AM REAL!_ Can you hear me, Mullet? I don’t know what you think you’re playing at, but it ain’t gonna work because I AM REAL!”

Bill’s scream echoed through the vastness of his Mindscape, reaching nobody’s ears but his own - which he didn’t really have to begin with. He had tried to tell us much to Mullet in person, he had _tried,_ and had almost managed. With Stanford out cold, he had managed to take possession of his body, open his eyes… and then not much else.

His head hurt, so badly it made it nearly impossible for him to focus - the effects of universes of knowledge pouring themselves into a limited brain. He could tell that he was on the backseat of a car and, with a terrible effort, he could see Mullet looking back at him. He had tried to speak, tried to make Sixer’s stupid tongue and vocal chords and everything else _cooperate,_ but all he could do was making a pitiful, meaningless noise.

_“Nnnnhhh…”_

_Let me out of here! Let me out! I am real and I need to get out before it kills us both, you useless sack of dumb!_

But even that was beyond his reach, with Stanford’s head throbbing with pain. He had felt his grip on consciousness slipping, tried to maintain it and failed. Failed failed and failed - he failed at _everything_ now, even at keeping a stupid human body under control, even at convincing a puny human with unlikely hair to just believe in his existence. He was one of the most powerful beings in the Multiverse - how could it be happening?

_You are not powerful and never were. Stanford’s mind is falling apart and so are you._

“Shut up.”

_Because you never existed outside it._

“SHUT UP! ALL OF YOU!”

The whispering didn’t stop, it _never_ did, but it quieted down so that all of the voices - countless voices, all of them speaking in different languages, some of them long gone before entire galaxies even existed - turned into the usual, intelligible murmur. Bill had been able to ignore it, keep it in the back of his mind so that he wouldn’t even hear it unless he wished to, unless he needed to access to the collective memories of the worlds he had destroyed.

But not anymore. Now they spoke up. Louder. Impossible to ignore - and none of the things they said was something he wished to hear.

It didn’t matter. None of it was real, but _he_ was.

… Right?

* * *

_I AM REAL!_

“Uugh...”

“You okay, Poindexter?”

Ford pinched the bridge of his nose and drew in a long breath before looking back at his brother and nodding. Stanley meant well, of course, but if he told him about the sudden bout of pain in his head he’d probably lift him up and drag him kicking and screaming right back into the emergency room.

“I’m fine. Don’t worry about it,” he said. It was true: the ache was quite neglectable compared to what he had felt when he had passed out that morning. It was nothing he couldn’t stand. As for what he was sure he had heard Bill screaming… he’d think it over soon, when alone and able to collect his thoughts. Right then, there was something they needed to do.

As soon as Fiddleford was done with the pay phone.

“Doesn’t look like he’s havin’ a good time, huh?” Stanley said, turning back to Fiddleford.

While the phone was at the far end of the waiting room, they could easily hear the voice coming from the other end of the line: very loud, decidedly feminine and _extremely_ displeased. It must be quite the tongue-lashing, and Fiddleford was taking it with his head hanging low and his shoulders hunched, only occasionally mumbling something in such a low tone that they couldn’t catch it.

It must be his first contact with his family in weeks, maybe even months, and of course Stanford couldn’t blame her for being furious. Thinking back of the photograph Fiddleford used to keep on his desk, the one with his wife and child smiling at the camera, he felt a pang of guilt. Fiddleford had built the gun and pulled the trigger - and not just on himself, truth be told - but Ford knew perfectly that he would have never created a such thing, let alone used it, if not for the insanity he had brought him into.

_I’m so sorry, Fiddleford. If only I had listened._

“Hey, it’s been twenty minutes. I need to make a call,” someone grumbled little behind him.

“He’s talkin’ to his family, buddy. Shut yer yap,” his brother grumbled back.

“How ‘bout you tell your friend to move it?”

“How ‘bout I give you a nose job on the spot?” Stanley replied without missing a beat, cracking his knuckles and causing the man to fall quiet. Ford found himself smiling faintly.

You sound like dad, he almost said, but stopped himself when he realized that Stanley didn’t have any news about their family - no news about their mother, about Shermie and his family, about their father’s early onset dementia. Their father kept asking where he’d gone, had even mistaken Stanford for _him_ when he had last visited, and Stanley didn’t know it. Since he had come there, he had never even asked: too much going on to pause and catch up, Ford supposed.

“Listen,” he finally said, reaching up to rub the back of his neck. “There are a few things I think you should--”

_Clack._

The sound of the phone’s receiver being set heavily back in its place caused him to trail off, and turn back to Fiddleford. He stayed still for a few moments, standing before the phone, before he sighed heavily and finally walked back to them, gaze on the floor.

“Sorry to keep y’all waiting,” he mumbled, walking past them. Stanley pushed his hands in his pockets and turned away with a grim expression, saying nothing. Ford couldn't keep himself from reaching out to put a hand on his old friend’s shoulder. He felt it tremble under his touch.

“Fiddleford…”

“Looks like I missed Tate’s birthday. And the anniversary. I just…” he paused, and made a vague gesture with his good hand. “Forgot about it. Hadn’t called in three weeks. Just dropped off the face of Earth. She’s furious and... well. Who can blame her? It’s not like I can tell her the truth. Best if I keep my mouth shut.”

“I… I am sorry.”

A deep breath. “Not your fault. You didn’t pull that trigger. I did. All things considered, if not for that brick to the face, I could have ended up a lot worse off than with just a failed marriage.”

“I’m sure it will sort itself out once you’re home and--”

“She’s filing for divorce.”

“... Ah.”

That caused Stanley to stop faking interest in his shoelaces. “Heh. Welcome to the club, I guess. If you need some advice, I can help. Been there, done that.”

Ford blinked at him. “You’ve been married?”

“For a few hours.”

_“Hours?”_

“Long story. Well, a _short_ story, really. Will tell you all about it one day. Women, right?” he added, and something about the exaggerated roll of his eyes caused Fiddleford to give a small chuckle.

“Heh. I would like to hear that, I suppose,” he said, reaching up to straighten his glasses. “I’ll just throw some water on my face and then I’m good to go.”

Stanford nodded, letting his hand drop. “Of course. We’ll take you home and--”

“No.” The answer was unexpected as it was forceful. Fiddleford met his gaze for the first time in several minutes, scowling. “I’m through running away. Ain’t going back until _this_ is over with. I’m comin’ with you.”

It was as though a hand had reached into his chest to squeeze his heart. Fiddleford had already been through so much because of him, lost so much to _his_ folly, and he still refused to leave his side. “You don’t have to--”

“Don’t. Just… don’t argue, because chances are you’d convince me,” Fiddleford cut him off, then turned to Stan and held out the good hand. “The gun.”

Stanley’s eyebrows shot up to almost his hairline. “Huh. No offense, but last time you had it you were sorta pointing it at me and--”

“I won’t this time. Give me the gun. There’s something I gotta do.”

Stanley’s eyes shifted towards Ford, who found himself nodding. He had a good guess of what Fiddleford meant to do, but even if he were wrong, he felt he couldn’t take that choice from him. So he looked back at Stanley and nodded. “It’s all right,” he said.

 _Or at least I hope so,_ he thought.

Thankfully, he did precisely what Ford had expected him to do: the moment Stanley handed him the gun he threw it on the floor with all the force he could muster and then stepped on it, breaking it beyond repair. He stared down at the remains for a few moments, breathing heavily and entirely ignoring the worried looks from just about everyone else in the - mostly empty - waiting room. Finally, he straightened himself and nodded.

“... All right. I’ll throw some water on my face and maybe scream a little in the toilet. Then I’m good to go,” he said, and turned to leave without another word.

It took a few moments of silent staring at his retreating back before Stanley spoke again. “... You think he’s gonna be okay?”

“I… I suppose. If anything, he might have taken the first step to set things right.”

“Yeah,” Stanley muttered, and turned to glance at the phone. “You know, I… called you, a few times,” he said, causing Ford to blink.

“You did? I can’t remember--”

“Didn’t say I spoke to you. Just that I called.”

_… Wait._

“The silent calls? That was you?” he asked, following Stanley’s gaze and looking at the phone. “You tried to call me? Us?”

“Yeah. Used my one phone call from the prison in Columbia once. Mom answered. She sounded great - said ‘Hello, Mrs. Pines, phone psychic!’ like a pro. Didn’t get much better though, huh? Or else she’d have known it was me.”

“But why didn’t you _say_ something?”

His brother shrugged. “Guess I was ashamed. I mean, I wasn’t supposed to be back until I made millions, right? And I didn’t. Still workin’ on it!” he added quickly, and gave Ford a smile that would have looked fake from a mile away. “I’m this close, honest. But… what? Do I have something on my face?”

_Make millions. He really thinks our father meant it._

For several moments, he could only stare and think of his mother’s worry, of the few words their father had spared on the matter.

_“That knucklehead has gone too long without consequences. He’s got a lesson to learn. He’ll be back with his tail between his legs before you know it.”_

But he hadn’t. Days had turned into weeks and months and years, and he hadn’t come back. Little by little, what their father kept repeating at every - increasingly rare - family gathering became less and less convincing. In the end, he stopped saying it. Their mother stopped looking out of the window every evening before going to sleep; she still waited, but dared not hope. And all that time, Stanley had stayed away because he didn’t think he would have been allowed to return. Not until he _made millions._

“Stanley…” Ford began, his voice shaking, but Stanley had already walked away to check his reflection on one of the metal doors.

“I can’t see anything - do I have something between my teeth? Didn’t have the time to brush ‘em this morning and-- okay, yeah, I do need a haircut…”

Stanford stared at him for a few moments, wondering how much of it was really his brother being dense and how much just an act to shy away from an uncomfortable conversation, and in the end he just decided to say nothing. Not now; there was too much they needed to do. Later, given that there would be a _later_ for him, they would talk.

And, hopefully, start making up for everything they had missed out.

* * *

“... Nerdy?”

“Fiddleford will do.”

“Whatever. Can I ask you something?”

“You’ll ask no matter what I say.”

“Fine. Do you have any idea what _this_ is all about?”

McGucket followed Stan’s gaze, frowning slightly. “... None whatsoever,” he finally said, and for a few moments they both just stared in silence as Stanford walked from tree to tree, muttering to himself and knocking on each one’s bark.

With that answer, Stan supposed that the most obvious explanation was that his brother had gone mad after all, but it wasn’t one he was willing to accept. He frowned, and approached him. “Hey, Poindexter, what are you looking fo--”

_Clang, clang._

The metallic sound caused Stan to trail off, because it had come from the tree trunk Stanford had just knocked onto. He may not know all that much about wood, but he knew two things about it: that it burned - a good thing to know when you’re committing insurance fraud - and that it was _not_ supposed to clang like metal when knocked on.

“I found it!” Stanford exclaimed, relief plain in his voice, and then went on to… open the tree? No, wait, he was opening a small door in the side of the tree. Which was weird, but not the _weirdest_ thing Stan had seen until then. He glanced inside over Stanford’s shoulder to see a small device with two tiny levers, one of which his brother reached to pull down.

“Sweet sarsaparilla…!” McGucket muttered behind them, and Stan turned to see that a hole had opened in the spot where he’d been standing moments before, revealing… was that…?

“The last of my journals,” Stanford muttered, kneeling down next to the hole and pulling the journal in question out of it. It looked everything like the one Stan had been given, except that the number on the cover was a ‘3’. So there was a Journal 2 somewhere as well? Just how much mysteriously mysterious mystery crap had his brother found in that town?

“What about it? Is it a special edition kind of thing? Like, just like the other one but better, so that you can sell it for a ridiculously high price and make lots of money with no extra work whatsoever?”

Stanford chuckled and stood up, the journal in his hand. “I’m afraid not. Its content is entirely different from that of the journal I gave you. Although this one does have invisible ink,” he added, and pulled out a small blacklight from his coat’s pocket. “It was meant to keep my most important thoughts hidden from Bill, but I suppose it _would_ count as a special feature.”

“Sure it does! Hey, once this is all over with, you should publish that stuff and become rich!”

Stanford’s smile faded, and he pressed his lips tightly together. “No, that cannot happen. No one is to read the things I have written on these pages.”

“... Aren’t we gonna read ‘em now?”

With a shake of his head, Stanford slipped the journal under his coat. “Not right now. We need to go somewhere else before that. Somewhere safe,” he added, and glanced past Stan, right at McGucket - who, from his part, frowned just a moment before nodding.

“The bunker,” he said quietly, and Stanford nodded back.

“The bunker. Once we’re there, I’ll explain you precisely what the Mindscape is like and--”

“... What, there’s a _bunker_ now?”

“Of course there is a bunker,” McGucket said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Stan scoffed. “Oh, excuse me if I’m not used to this weird place and its weird secrets. Gimme a break here, okay? I’m only getting bits and pieces as things go, I only spent a couple of nights reading that other journal and--”

“... A couple of nights?”

As soon as Stanford’s voice reached him, words spoken slowly and the tone suddenly colder than before, Stanley knew he had made a mistake. He turned back to his brother, scrambling to come up with an excuse, stomach clenching at the sight of his eyes narrowing suspiciously at him. “O-oh, haha! Did I say ‘nights’? I meant minutes! Hah! Of course! You know, just a couple of minutes before I hid it. Like, uh. Like you said. I hid it. Yes.”

Stanford’s eyes narrowed another fraction. “Where did you hide it?”

“Uuh… Hey, wasn’t I supposed to never tell ya--”

“Things have changed,” Stanford cut him off. “Take me to its hiding place.”

“Yeeeah, I _could_ do that. But look, it’s a long walk and it’s cold as balls here, and you’re not looking too good, so maybe we should just leave it for another--”

“Take me to that journal’s hiding place, Stanley. Now.”

“W-well…”

Stanford scowled, and suddenly it didn’t matter that he was over ten years older, that he was gaunt and with hair barely growing back: in that one moment, he looked everything like he had the night everything had taken a turn for the very worst.

_This was no accident, Stan! You did this!_

“You didn’t hide it, Stan! You kept it - you lied!” Stanford snapped, taking a step forward and causing Stanley to step back to keep the distance, lifting his hands.

“O-okay, look, I might have taken some time--”

“YOU LIED TO ME!”

_All you ever do is lie and cheat right on your brother's coattails!_

“I just wanted to understand--”

“YOU UNDERSTAND NOTHING!” Stanford screamed, and his hands shot out to grab the front of Stan’s coat, shaking him. Somewhere behind them, McGucket let out a scared yelp. “I trusted you! And you… you were supposed to trust me, Stanley! You said you _trusted_ me!”

“I do! Honest! I just-- I had just gotten here, I had no idea what was going on, and I thought--” he began, only to trail off when Stanford suddenly cried out and let go of him. He staggered back, hands holding his head, and let out another cry of pain before sinking on his knees.

“A- _aaaaagh!_ My head…!”

“Stanford!” Stan and McGucket cried out at the same time, and reached Stanford roughly in the same moment… only to step back when he violently swung out his arm at them, staring at him with crazed, bloodshot eyes.

“No! Stay back! You won’t throw me back in there!”

… What? Throw him back where?

“B-buddy, what are you…?” McGucket began, then Stanford’s reddened eyes immediately turned on him, and he seemed to hesitate.

“Fiddleford, which… which one of you is this?”

“What…?”

“What dimension is this? Is it the parallel one, or… no, it cannot be, he wouldn’t be here…” his eyes turned back to Stan, and his features twisted. “You… you did this!” he snarled.

“Stanford, calm down! Look, I’m sorry, okay? I just wanted to understand--”

“YOU PUSHED ME THROUGH THE PORTAL!”

… Okay, Stan thought, now he was utterly lost. “I… what? But I never--”

“You pushed him… beyond the portal?” McGucket’s voice reached him, thin and somewhat strangled; Stan turned to see him taking a couple of steps away from him, eyes wide, before he closed them and shook his head. “No, no. _No._ It is unseen. It is unsee--”

“Are you kidding me?” Stan snapped, fighting the urge to grab both of them and shake them, if anything to make them stop spewing all that nonsense. “Stanford, listen to me! I never pushed you anywhere, let alone through that portal! You shut it down, remember?”

Stanford shook his head and wrapped his arms around himself, trembling. Even though he was still kneeling in the snow, his face was glistening with sweat. “We fought,” he choked out. “You refused to go hide the journal and we fought. The portal was activated. You pushed me and… _he_ almost got me, he almost did… I was lost and alone and… and...”

That was it, that was about all Stanley Pines could take. He immediately knelt down in front of his brother, grasping his shoulders, and spoke slowly. If Stanford struck out again, then so be it: his nose had already been broken a couple of times anyway, and he could live without a tooth or two. But he didn’t: he just stared at him, gaze bright and feverish, while he spoke.  

“Listen to me, okay? We never fought. Hell, you were too weak to stand! We watched that old reel together, remember? The hunt for the Jersey devil,”  he added. Maybe he had just imagined it, but for a moment he could have sworn that his brother’s cracked lips had curled into something that was almost the ghost of a smile.

“The Stanventurers,” he murmured. “I… remember that happening. But I also remember… everything else,” he choked out, and looked back at him again. “I need to know what reality I am in,” he added, and Stan’s grip on his shoulders tightened.

“I don’t know about realities and whatnot, but I know that this is _real,_ okay? You’re at the right side of the portal. I am here. You’re safe and--”

“Stanley?”

“Yeah?”

“Take your clothes off.”

_… The who and the what now?_

Stanley stared at his brother. He blinked. He turned slowly to shoot McGucket a puzzled gance, and the other man just shrugged back at him. “I got nothin’,” was all he said. “You, uh… reckon I should turn, or…?”

“Only your jacket and shirt,” Stanford spoke again, apparently unaware of the absurdity of the situation. “Take them off and turn. I must see your back.”

“Oookay. Look, before I do it and possibly catch the cold of my lifetime--”

“Just do it!” his brother gritted out, and Stan decided that okay, there had been enough arguing. He let go of Stanford like he had caught fire and stood.

“Okay, okay. Just calm down.”

Getting rid of his jacket and shirt was short work, but holy Moses was it _cold._ Trying his hardest to keep his teeth from chattering, Stan got rid of both, threw them at McGucket - who somehow managed to catch both with one arm, his face now a pretty deep shade of red - and turned to show Stanford his back.

“Okay, here it is. Check out what you gotta check out quickly, ‘cause I’m freezing here.”

He heard Stanford standing up, and the next moment he felt a cold hand pressing against his right shoulder blade. A thumb brushed over his skin, then retreated, and he heard his brother giving a sigh of relief. “Nothing,” he mumbled. “You… can put your clothes back on.”

“Gee, _thanks._ What was that about?” Stan snorted, taking his clothes back from McGucket and putting them back on as quickly as he could. He turned back to look at his brother, who avoided his gaze.

“In that reality, I… I gave you a mark, so to speak. While we were fighting. I had to make sure it wasn’t there,” he said, and finally looked back at him. “... I’m sorry, Stanley.”

A lump in Stan’s throat kept him from speaking for a couple of moments, so he hid it by shrugging and letting out a slightly exaggerated snort. “It’s all right. I got to show off my muscles, if anything. Bet Nerdy liked that,” he said, flexing his biceps and ignoring the indignant sputtering coming from behind him. “And, uh. I’m sorry, too. For keeping the journal. I just wanted to help.”

“... I know. And I know I’m not making it easy.” Stanford paused, and finally reached to put a hand on Stan’s shoulder. “Let’s head to the bunker before… this happens again. And, Stan?”

“Yes?”

“However this goes, you did all that could be done. If… if I don’t make it--”

“Don’t be an idiot, okay? You’ll be just fine and--”

“If I _don’t_ make it,” Stanford repeated more forcefully, cutting him off, “then it will have been my own goddamn - sorry, Fiddleford, sorry - my own fault. Promise me you won’t think you’re to blame for any of this. And most of all,” he added, his grip tightening. “If I ever say otherwise, then don’t listen to me. I would mean I’m not in my right mind.”

“... But you are now.”

Stanford smiled again. “Yes. I am now.”

* * *

_“What’s the meaning of this? What are these people doing in the basement?”_

_“You… you shouldn’t have been back for another hour?”_

_“Answer my question!”_

_“They’re helping building--”_

_“No one should be here! No one should know! What’s gotten into you? What are doing behind my-- wait, is that…?”_

_“It’s all right, Ford. It’s for the best. Everything will be done so much more quickly and you don’t have to worry about a single thing. It will be done and we’ll both move on. They won’t know. They’ll forget.”_

_“You said you had destroyed that gun!”_

_“As far as you remember, I did.”_

_“Fiddleford, sto--”_

_“It’s for the best, Stanford.”_

_The trigger is pulled. The light blinds him. He forgets._

_For a time._

* * *

“So, the memories just came back?”

“Yes. It took some time, but it did come back to me eventually. That must have been when the chain and padlock on that door fell - making the memory accessible to my consciousness again. Memories are not erased, as you’ve found yourself, nor they can be entirely removed. Just… locked away. Psyche-locks, if you will. And they can be removed.”

Fiddleford hummed, brushing his hair back as he often did when in thought. “... And here I thought that gun to be my best creation yet. It doesn’t even quite do what it was meant to.”

“I know the feeling,” Ford said. They shared a bitter chuckle before Stanley spoke up.

“So, lemme see if I got this straight,” he said, finally tearing his gaze away from the cryogenic tube where the Shapeshifter was frozen, inhuman features twisted in a snarl. “Memories are behind doors in the mind, and they get locked up with chains and padlocks when a memory is ‘erased’?” he asked, making quote marks in the air at the last word. Stanford nodded.

“Yes, that’s correct. This, I believe, is what happened with some of Cipher’s own memories.”

Fiddleford shivered at the mention of Bill’s name, but he managed to keep himself under control and reached up to adjust his glasses with his good hand. “And how do you reckon that?” he asked instead.

And Ford told them everything: the merging mindscapes, its effect on him - Stanley clenched his fists so tightly his knuckles turned white at that point, and Ford regretted keeping that from him until then - and the defective memory of Bill Cipher he had found wandering in his own mind. He explained how that memory of him flickered and glitched when asked things it could not remember, and the realization that had hit him while looking through the door leading to a once-deleted memory of his own.

“Some of Bill’s own memories must have been locked away just as mine were,” he said. It was a guess, however much sense it made, but it was also one he was certain of. On what basis, he wasn’t entirely sure. Perhaps it had something to do with the merging mindscapes, or perhaps he was just too desperate to think of it as a possible dead end. Either way, it was worth a try. “Long, long ago - so long, in fact, that one of his earliest memories is affected. Cipher is the master of mind; I believe that these memories, whatever they are, were locked away by his own hand.”

“So, something he was desperate to forget,” Fiddleford murmured, looking exceptionally pale, and quickly crossed himself. Stanford couldn’t blame him: whatever it may be that Bill Cipher himself wished to erase from his mind, it had to be unspeakable horror.

But it might also be a weakness. Something they could use against him - his only chance.

“Whatever it is, I need to find out. It might be something important that could destroy him for good, but I’m going to need help when I venture in Cipher’s Mindscape. I won’t ask you to come, Fiddleford. It is too much to ask of you. Stanley--”

“Enough talkin’,” his brother cut him off, and grinned, cracking his knuckles. “Can’t wait for a chance to sock this Bill in the eye.”

Ford couldn’t hold back a smile. “You might get a shot soon, but try not to hit the wrong Bill.”

“You mean, not the kid?”

“Precisely. We might need him,” he said, and opened the Journal, placing it on the dust-covered table. “This incantation will allow you to enter my mind. Just read it once I’m asleep. I’ll meet you there.”

“Ain’t the metal plate gonna keep me out?”

“Not if I allow you in. It doesn’t shut anything in or out on its own - it allows me to choose whether or not to allow anyone to do so. Cipher could leave my mind, if I allowed him to.”

Stanley blinked. “Wait, you could have just decided to get him outta your brain and--” he began, but trailed off when Ford turned to stare at him.

“I am never letting that monster out,” he said, perhaps more coldly than he had meant to, and Stanley lifted his arms in  a gesture of surrender.

“Fine, fine. We’re gonna annihilate him or somethin’, then.”

_Oh, I truly hope we are._

“... That is the plan. Just read the incantation as soon as I’m unconscious. Fiddleford,” he added, turning to his old friend. He was still pale, but held his gaze. “When he begins reading, step away so that it doesn’t affect you as well, and then… just keep an eye on things. The anaesthetic should keep my body out of commission for quite a while, so that Bill won’t be able to use it. But it may be best to restrain me, just in case. Stanley…?”

“Yeah, yeah. I left the stuff somewhere near the entrance, just a minute…”

Eyes fixed on his brother’s retreating back, Ford drew in a deep breath before speaking quietly. “A shame the cryogenic chamber is already taken. It might have been a solution.”

“What…?”

Stanford Pines turned to his old friend. “I know I have said I’m sorry. I don’t think I have said how much I admire you, though. How important your friendship has been.”

Fiddleford blinked at him, then gave a nervous laugh. “Hey, quit talkin’ like it’s a goodbye. I--”

“I hope it’s won’t be one. But I need you to promise me something,” Ford said. “I don’t know what lurks beyond that door. I don’t know what the consequences on my mind - on _me_ \- might be. I’m hopeful it will help us, but hope is all I have and I’m through gambling with everyone else’s safety. Should things take a turn for the worst, should you feel it’s needed, promise me you won’t hesitate. Take my brother out of here and seal me in.”

“Stanford, I--”

“Please.”

There was a silence, once that seemed to stretch longer than any of Stanford’s sleepless nights. Then, just as Stanley walked back into the room, Fiddleford spoke again in a low whisper.

“... I promise.”


	10. Kings of New Jersey

“Videntus omnium. Magister mentium. Magnesium ad hom… no homo… The hell is this, some kinda tongue twister?”

“It’s Latin.”

“Onay itway isn'tway! Iway owknay owhay atthay--”

“Not _Pig_ Latin,” Fiddleford snapped, barely holding back from slapping a hand on his forehead. He was several steps away from both Stanley and the candles he had lit up, next to the chair where Stanford was sleeping on, tied down and with a straitjacket on him. “It’s just Latin.”

“Eh, it sounds boring. Like a sandwich without bacon. Because it’s Pig Latin without pig! Hah! Get it? It’s funny because-- What? Have I got something on my face?”

“... Just keep reading,” Fiddleford said, faintly wishing he could erase that joke from his mind, and took another step back for good measure. He really didn’t want to be dragged into Stanford’s Mindscape as well, both because he was supposed to stay in the real world to keep an eye on things and because… well. He just plainly didn’t want to.

The mere thought of getting another glimpse of that _thing_ was enough to make him desperately wish he still had the memory gun. If he were sucked into Standord’s mind, if he had to see more, he didn’t think his mind would stand it.

No, scratch that. He _knew_ his mind would crumble.

“So, where was I…” Stanley Pines was muttering, unaware of his musings. “Hominem… yeah. So. Videntus omnium. Magister mentium. Magnesium ad homine. Magnum opus. Habeas corpus! Inceptus Nolanus overratus! Magister mentium! Magister mentium! Magister mentium--!”

It all happened quickly, so very quickly: the candles on the floor were snuffed out as though hit by a gust of wind that simply could not be there, and Stanley Pines sank on the ground with a thud, the journal falling on the ground next to him. Stanford’s unconscious body seemed jerk just once in its restraints, and then was motionless again. They both were - motionless, and silent.

Fiddleford Hadron McGucket fervently hoped that wouldn’t change.

* * *

“Hoooly Moses. This worked! It actually worked! I… huh. I actually thought there would be more nerdy stuff here.”

Spinning to take a better look at his surroundings, Stan was somewhat disappointed to realize there wasn’t much of anything for him to see. As in, maybe there was, but all he could see was thick, milky fog all around. Which way should he go now? Should he just feel his way for a door, or… Hell, last thing he needed was accidentally stumbling somewhere _he_ shouldn’t be wandering, like some kind of closet with all of Ford’s kinky nerd fantasies or--

“Stanley.”

“GAH!”

“Stan, wait, it’s me!”

“Ah… Hah! I knew it. I was just clearing my throat.”

Stanford laughed when he spun to face him, but Stan barely heard him: all he could focus on was the fact that he looked so much better - so much _healthier_ \- right there, in his mind. He wasn’t as terribly thin, the bags under his eyes were gone, and he even had all of his hair back in place, instead of the uneven patches that were slowly growing back on his skull after the operation. There in his mind, Stanley could look at him and see his _own_ face staring back.

Unaware of his thoughts, Stanford frowned slightly and turned to look behind him. “What is it? Did you see something?”

We look like twins again, Stanley thought, but didn’t say it. He just swallowed a sudden lump in his throat and shrugged. “Nothing. How could _anyone_ see anything in this fog?”

“Fair enough,” Ford conceded. “This place used to look... different, but needs must when the devil drives. I couldn’t let _that_ devil see everything that was in my mind any time he wished; every bit of knowledge is a weapon to him.”

The Beast with just one eye, McGucket had called it. Stanley tried to imagine how it would feel, having some kind of creepy demon wandering across your mind and sticking its all-seeing eye where it didn’t belong, and the thought made his skin crawl. It was no wonder Stanford was trying to protect as many of his thoughts and memories as he could.

_Well, better get moving so that he won’t have to do it anymore._

“We’re gonna fix that,” Stan said, cracking his knuckles with a grin. “You know how to get around, right?”

For a couple of moments Ford just stared at him, then he smiled a little. “You’re taking all of this surprisingly well. Surely, hearing about the Mindscape is quite different to actually stepping into it,” he added, causing Stan to shrug.

“Well, I _have_ seen my share of stuff around the world, and you and McNerdy kinda gave me a crash course on weird. So I’m good. For now. I’ll keep it together, sock this Bill in the eye, and then maybe have a little shouting session in an empty room once this is over with.”

“Shouting session?”  
“Just yelling ‘what the hell just happened??’ at a wall for, say, twenty minutes. And by the way, after that I’ll be taking you away for a long vacation well away from all things weird. Deal?”

Stanford seemed to stiffen, and Stan had only a moment to regret using that word before his brother nodded. “It seems fair enough,” he said, then turned away. “To answer your earlier question… yes, I do know how to navigate through my mind, fog and all. Do follow me. And, Stanley?”

“Yeah?”

“Stay close to me. It’s best not to get lost.”

“After ten-something years, Poindexter, I ain’t getting you out of my sight for a minute,” Stan said. He meant it as a promise.

He wouldn’t be able to quite keep it.

* * *

“Wait, this is… are we home?”

Wonder was almost painfully clear in Stanley’s voice, and Ford made an effort not to focus on it, not to turn to see whatever expression may be on his face: he just glanced across the beach, where the Stan O’ War’s hull lay in the sand, looking for their younger selves.

“My fondest memory of it,” he finally said.

“Is that…?”

“Our boat, yes,” Ford said, and for a moment he was almost afraid his brother would ask what had become of it in the real world - a question whose answer Stanford didn’t even know - but instead Stanley gave a small chuckle.

“Oh, yeah. Those were the days, huh? The sea, the boat, the two of us running around like those two-- Wait. Those kids, are they…?”

Stanford had no time to confirm what his brother had likely already guessed: the next moment the memories of their younger selves had spotted them and were running up to them. Young Stanford was holding… wait, hadn’t Billy been _gray_ last time he had seen him?

“We tried to stop him,” his younger self spoke before he could, coming to a skidding halt in front of him. He had some streaks of yellow over his shirt  and jacket, and some even on the tip of his nose. “Well, I tried to stop him. Stanley actually opened the can of paint for him, and he just jumped in it--!”

“HEY! You were supposed not to tell!” young Stanley protested, elbowing his twin in the ribs. His hands were covered in yellow pain, which reached up almost to his elbows. “I didn’t know he was gonna jump in!”

“I _told_ you I was gonna jump in,” Bill piped in, squirming out of young Stanford’s grasp and proceeding to climb up to his shoulder, where he threw his arms up. “Makeover! What do you think?”

With the yellow paint drying on him, telling him apart from the _other_ Bill was suddenly more difficult - even without the top hat and tie, and lacking the brick pattern on the lower half of his body. It made Ford more uneasy than he cared to admit. “Well, that looks… er…”

“Hey! Is that...?” young Stanley suddenly exclaimed, pointing a paint-covered finger beyond Stanford, reminding him quite suddenly that his brother was still standing next to him… and uncharacteristically silent. Ford turned to see him staring at the boys in silence, eyes shifting from one twin to the other and then pausing on Billy before finally turning back to his own younger self.

“... I, uh. Hi. I guess.”

“THIS IS SO COOL!” young Stanley exclaimed, and immediately rushed by his side, reaching to grab his arm. He grinned widely, showing off the gap between his front teeth. “How strong am I gonna get? Can you lift me up? You got muscles, right? Arm wrestling match! C’mon! Betcha ten bucks--”

Stanley blinked before pulling up his arm, the boy still attached to it, and watched him dangle for a few moments before giving a barking laugh. “HAH! I like this kid, Sixer! Clearly a bright spark,” he said with a grin, and hoisted him up on his shoulders. “Kings of New Jersey?”

“Yes! Kings of New Jersey!” young Stanley yelled, and Stanford wasn’t too surprised when his own younger self joined in.

“KINGS OF NEW JERSEY! KINGS OF NEW JERSEY! KINGS--”

“Hey, what? What’s going on? What’s a New Jersey? Who’s that? Why does he have more fluff on the head than you do? Someone answer to me!” Bill was protesting, in precarious balance on young Stanford’s shoulder. Ford sighed before reaching to take him in his hands.

“Answers are exactly what we’re after now,” he said. “And we’re going to need your help, Bill.”

The boy blinked, looking up towards him. “My help?”

“Yes. There is something we’re looking for, and--”

“KINGS OF NEW JERSEY! KINGS OF NEW JERSEY! KINGS OF--”

“Stan, that’s _enough._ And I’m talking to all Stans present,” Stanford called out, and the chorus ended abruptly. Stan - the adult Stan - grinned somewhat sheepishly and let the kids off him. Young Ford brushed his jacket, as though trying to brush away the earlier bout of childishness, while young Stanley just jumped on the ground and popped a chewing gum in his mouth, after producing it from… well, Ford wasn’t entirely sure where it had come from and found it best not to investigate.

He nodded at them and turned his attention back to Bill, who was sitting in his cupped hands. “Somewhere out there, there is a door. A locked door. We need to open it, and I believe you’re the only one who can do that.”

Bill frowned, reaching to scratch his upper angle. Even his arms and legs were covered in yellow paint. “And what’s behind it?” he asked, only to widen his eye a moment later. “Oh! Is it the Fourth Dimension? I read about it in a book!”

“Right. One of the books you got from… where, precisely?”

“I… uh…” Billy’s frown deepened, once again, his whole surface turned into gray static for a moment, in a jarring contrast to the yellow he had now covered himself in. “I don’t remember.”

“You don’t know who gave you those books,” Stanford stated.

Another flash of gray. “Nu-uh.”

“And aren’t you wondering how come you don’t remember?”

Another frown. “I guess it’s weird,” the boy said slowly. “So, the answer is behind that door?”

 _That is what I hope,_ Stanford thought.

“Yes,” he said, and nodded towards Stan. “That is Stanley, my brother. We’ll--”

“Oh! You’ve got the same name!” Billy exclaimed, pointing at Stan with one hand and at young Stanley with the other before Ford even had the time to realize he had made a mistake. “Why is that?”

The boys exchanged a quick glance before young Stanford replied. “It’s a common name. Isn’t your real name William? That’s very common, too,” he added casually.

Billy seemed to think about it for a moment or two before shrugging. “Yep, true. It’s also the name of--” he began, only to trail off suddenly, his surface bursting into gray static again. “Ow!” he yelped, reaching up to press both hands on his upper angle. “What was that? It hurt!”

 _We’re on to something,_ Ford thought. _We must be._

“We’ll find out,” he said in what hoped would be a reassuring tone, and let the boy slip into his coat’s breast pocket. “Let’s go, Stanley.”

“Yeah, let’s go!”

“Way ahead of you!”

“Race ya to the door!”

… Wait, what?

“No, not _you_ two. It’s far too dangerous for you to--” Stanford protested, turning to the children - or, at least, to the spot where the children had been standing until a moment ago: they were already sprinting to the door out of their memory, chanting at the top of their lungs as they went.

“KINGS OF NEW JERSEY! KINGS OF NEW JERSEY!”

“... Come with us,” Ford finished with a sigh.

“Hah!” Stanley laughed, stepping beside him. “Did you seriously try to stop ‘em? As if. They can’t be stopped, remember? Ready to take on the world,” he added, elbowing him in the side. “Dangerous or not--”

“Dangerous?” Bill piped in, twisting in his pocket to look up at them. He sounded excited at the thought; it was hard to tell whether it was because he was a child, or because he was Bill Cipher. “How dangerous is New Jersey?”

Stanley blinked down at him. “New Jersey? What made you-- oooh, right! Kings of New Jersey and all that. Yeah, well. Let’s say we’re going to New Jersey. Sorta. Kinda. But don’t worry, short stuff. It’s nothing we cannot handle. Just stick with us.”

Stanford raised an eyebrow. _New Jersey_ wasn’t precisely how he’d have chosen to call Bill Cipher’s mindscape, to be entirely honest, but he knew some people would argue it wouldn't be too far off, either. So, in the end, he said nothing of it.

“Very well. Let’s get going.”

“Do they have ice cream in New Jersey?”

Stanford Pines looked down at him, at that single, wide eye turned up to him. Looking up at the one he believed to be a being with answers. Eager. Trusting, like he had been.

_Willing to believe the shadows on the wall are real._

In the end, Ford smiled at him. It did not reach his eyes.

“... Just open one door for me, and you’ll have all the ice cream you want.”

* * *

“Nnnh…”

The groan was barely audible, but it was enough to make the hair on Fiddleford’s neck stand on end. He jumped on his feet, the crowbar tight in his good hand and heart beating somewhere in his throat, staring down at the Pines twins - Stanley, snoring away on the floor, and Stanford, clad in a straitjacket and tied to a chair, drugged to his eyeballs. Neither of them was moving. Neither of them opened their eyes. And yet...  yet there _had_ been a groan.

_The Shapeshifter._

The thought alone was enough for terror to grip Fiddleford’s throat. He spun, crowbar raised, fully expecting to see the cryogenic chamber had opened and that monster - or worse yet his own face - staring at him before it grabbed him and… and…

… And no one was there. Further ahead of him, the cryogenic chamber was undisturbed, the Shapeshifter still frozen solid. Fiddleford slowly lowered the crowbar, listening hard, but all that he could hear was the blood rushing in his ears, his own labored breathing and--

“Uuugh…”

This time, there was no mistaking it: it couldn’t possibly be his imagination. Fiddleford turned again, and to his dawning horror someone was shifting ever so slightly, someone was making that noise. And it was not Stanley.

Under his horrified gaze, Stanford - the thing in Stanford’s skin - began moving weakly, struggling to open his eyes. Fiddleford knew, with utmost certainty, that if he succeeded in doing so it wouldn’t be familiar brown eyes he’d be looking into.

_The Beast with just one eye._

Oh God no, please, no. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t look at _it_ again and remain sane.

 _He’s restrained either way,_ he told himself, and it sounded so very reasonable, but it wasn’t enough to keep his clammy hand from tightening on the crowbar. If he used it now, if he lifted it up and then brought it down on his head… surely that would be better than being sealed in there alive. Quicker. Surely no one could blame him. Stanford would understand.

_Stanley wouldn’t._

_He understands nothing. He wasn’t there, he didn’t see, no one did. It is unseen. It is unsee--_

The groaning stopped. Stanford’s head dropped. His eyes remained closed. The thing that had tried to take control had failed and retreated.

And Fiddleford Hadron McGucket was left standing there, the metal bar held tightly in his hand, facing two unconscious bodies and the enormity of what he’d almost, _almost_ done.

* * *

“Are we there yet?”

“No,” Stanford said.

“Are we there yet?”

“No,” Stanley grunted.

“Are we there yet?”

“No,” both of the kids droned.

“Are we-- Hey, what’s this noise?”

Billy’s question caused them all to pause, stopping in their tracks and listening intently. True enough, there were noises - like thousands of voices whispering very softly, none of them in a language they knew. And, now that Stan squinted, there was also something to see - faint colors and lights in the distance through the fog, there one moment and gone the next.

“... We are getting closer,” Stanford said, his voice grave. “The line between my min-- ow!”

“Third Dimension,” young Stanley helpfully supplied, giving his foot another quick stomp for good measure and smiling up at Bill, still nestled in Stanford’s pocket. Stan barely held back a grin. Nice save, that. He’d always been a smart cookie after all, bad grades and all.

“Right,” Ford was saying. “The line between the Third Dimension and... New Jersey was growing thinner last time I’ve been here. By now, it may as well have blurred, if not entirely faded. We might step past it any moment, and when that happens we’ll have to be careful. It is an unpredictable place, and the door we’re looking for might be anywhere… what is it?” he asked when young Stanford reached up to pull at his coat.

“Listen,” he said, his face pale.

Stan listened, but he could hear nothing. Neither did the others, if the confused looks on their faces - or just eye, in Bill’s case - were anything to go by. It was all quiet. Very quiet.

… Too quiet. The creepy whispering - why couldn’t he hear it anymore? Why had it stopped?

_Oh, hot belgian waffles._

“Ford--” Stan tried to call out, turning to his brother, and he had just a moment to see his same horrified expression mirrored on his face before the world seemed to explode with colors so bright violent he cried out and had to close his eyes, shielding them with an arm. But there was no shielding his ears from the loud, shrill voice that echoed all around them.  

“Well well well well! Isn’t it Stan, Stan, Stan and Stan!”

There were some screams coming from the kids as Stan felt himself being lifted up, although that wasn’t quite what it felt like: it was more like _falling_ _up,_ only to come to an abrupt stop, floating in mid-air. Stan opened his eyes, squinting against the violent light, and found himself staring at something that glowed golden before him. Now _that_ was something he’d have loved to see under other circumstances - any other circumstances - but now gold couldn’t be the farthest thing from his mind: all he could focus on was the huge slit pupil staring at him. The All Seeing Eye, Stanford had called it.

Bill Cipher.

_The Beast with just one eye._

* * *

Bill laughed and laughed and laughed.

He did that often - all the time, really - but it had been a while since doing do had really felt _good._ Now he had a good reason to laugh: honestly, Sixer’s face was a _riot_ to look at.

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Hello there, Fordsy! How nice of you to drop by! I _reeeally_ wasn’t expecting you to show up! Geez, talk about taking a guy by surprise! Did you honestly think your pathetic little fog trick could keep me from knowing you were coming?” he added, reaching up to wipe a tear of mirth from his eye. “You - hah! - you trespassed into my mind without even noticing, and all I had to do was throwing in a little fog of my own! Some genius,” he added, and allowed himself a moment to enjoy the clear pang of hurt on his face before turning his eye to his other guests. “And wow, you brought company! Is that an itty bitty six-fingered freak I spy with my little--”

“YOU TAKE THAT BACK!”

Bill’s eye shifted to a young Stanley Pines, who was rather pathetically trying to swim closer to him in the air, fists clenched. He managed to get between him and young Stanford and tried to throw a few punches, but he was still too far away. “No one calls my brother a freak, freak!”

That called for mockery, of course: humans ruffling their feathers were _so_ endearing to play with, and Bill almost did so. Almost. Because all of a sudden, he was just annoyed. He wanted them both out of the way. He scoffed and looked back at Stanford.

“Your dumb brother and your old memories, IQ? Is that your army? To quote your old man, I ain’t impressed. And to think you showed _such_ promise,” he added with a sigh, and swatted both boys away like the pesky flies they were.

“AGH!”

“HEY!”

“No!” Stanley Pines tried to reach out for them, but it was too little, and too late: the kids were thrown down into the foggy nothingness below, disappearing from sight. Bill laughed again, and reached to snatch him, his grip on him tight enough to make it difficult for him to breathe. Not that he _needed_ to in the mindscape, but humans did have a habit to breathe, and habits are hard to break when you’re such a dull, frightened little thing.

“Stanley!”  

Ignoring Ford’s scream - adorable how he worried, considered that there was nothing he could do to truly, _physically_ harm his dimwit brother - Bill stared down at Stanley Pines, willing his eye to turn blood red and his surface to blacken. The resulting look of terror was very, very satisfying. Humans could occasionally be annoying, but dear Mullet had managed to piss him off something fierce.

_Prove you’re some kinda demon and not a second crazy personality Stanford got after hitting his head or something._

_I can’t!_

_Keep tryin’, Mr. Mighty Demon. You’re outta luck._

Well, Bill thought with yet another shrill laugh, who was outta luck now? “Well well, hello there, Mullet. I know you’ve been _dying_ to meet me eye to eye, so here I am. Tell me, DO I LOOK REAL ENOUGH NOW?”

His voice turned into the scream of the hurricane, the crack of thunder, the rumble of the earthquake. He tightened his hand around Stan Pines, ready to ignite it and, at the very least, get him back in the real world screaming and flailing. It caused that puny human to wheeze and try hitting his hand with tiny, useless fists. “Now that I hold your pathetic little astral projection in my hand, tell me - was your brother worth all of the hassle? It could have been so easy! Just make a _deal_ and we’d both be happy! But you’re still on time to get that plate outta his skull and be rid of me. Think if over once you’re back on the other--”

“We’re not going back! Get outta the way! We’ve got to go to New Jersey!”

… The who and the what now?

Bill blinked and looked up, letting his colors return to normal. His gaze fell on Stanford… or, more accurately, at the tiny form that was wriggling out of his coat’s pocket.

“No!” Stanford tried to say, and reached to grab him to put him back in, hidden from sight, but Bill was having none of it. With a lazy wave of his hand, he made chains materialize to immobilize him, causing him to cry out in surprise. His other hand opened, making Stanley Pines fall down into the fog below; his scream, and that of his brother as he uselessly struggled to reach out for him, were lost under Bill’s laugh.

“Hahahaha, oooh man, look at that!” he muttered, and hovered closer, circling the tiny, paint-splattered memory of what he had been long, long ago. “You brought a piece of me back! Thank you, Fordsy! You shouldn’t have!”

“Leave him alone, Cipher!” Stanford barked, causing Bill’s old memory to frown in confusion.

“But I’m not doing anything! Just told him to get outta the way so we can go to New Jersey!”

Well, now _that_ was rich. Bill laughed again, reaching out to grab that tiny, clueless version of himself. With a snap of his fingers, he caused the coat of yellow paint to disappear, restoring him to his usual, dull gray self. Flatlanders - that was how those of his kind used to be called. In other dimensions, they were often referred to as _Flatties._ It was meant to be an insult and, as far as Bill was concerned, not an undeserved one.

_Flat minds in a flat world with flat dreams._

But he had changed that. Oh boy, had he changed it. He had changed _everything._

“Hello, little guy,” he said, bringing him closer to his eye. “You’re a long way from where you’re supposed to-- ow! HEY! Keep your fingers outta my eye!”

“I am not going back!” the kid shrieked, and turned his eye into a mouth; within a blink, sharp little teeth sunk Bill’s his finger. It was nothing, of course, no more painful than an ant’s bite for a human, and it made Bill laugh again.

“Oh, no? And where do you think you’re going?”

“New Jersey!”

“Pfft-- HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! _New Jersey?_ Seriously? _Hah!_ What have you told this kid, Sixer?” Bill chortled, shooting Stanford’s pale, drawn face an amused glance before turning his eye back on the kid. “I hate to break it to ya, but you ain’t going to New Jersey.”

“I won’t go back in the Second Dimension! You can’t stop me!”

“Bleep!” Bill exclaimed, letting a red cross flash in his eye for a moment. “Wrong answer! Unfathomable power says I can. I mean, not that I’d need power to ruin your day out. It just ain’t happening. How do you think you’re going to New Jersey if you’re not even re--” he trailed off, realization hitting him suddenly, like a bolt of lighting.

_I won’t go back in the Second Dimension!_

That dimension was gone, had been gone for a trillion years. But the boy didn’t know; he was unaware of everything that had happened past the moment his memory had been created. And that meant… was that…? Bill blinked, and his eye turned back to Stanford. Earlier he had asked him what he’d told that kid, but now it looked like what really should have asked was, what _hadn’t_ he told him? “... Wait a minute. You mean he doesn’t _know_ _what_ he is? _Where_ we are? He actually thinks he’s the _real_ deal? Hah! This is just adorable!”

Ford’s features twisted in anger and something that wasn’t too far away from pain. “Leave him alone! He doesn’t need to know--”

“If you think I’d hold back knowledge from _myself,_ Brainiac, you’ve got another think coming,” Bill cut him off, not even looking at him. “Well, kiddo, I got news for ya. Like, lots of news, like the nature of the universe and a few very fun facts about our place in the Great Circle of Strife, but I’ll keep it short. The Second Dimension is gone ‘cause I burned it to the ground, you ain’t even real ‘cause you’re a memory of me in the past, and you’re never gonna see New Jersey. ‘Cause you’re not real, got that part? Oh, also your _friend_ over there kept all of these bits of info for from you,” he added, eye flickering towards Stanford. “So did the others I swatted away, really. They were all in it. One big joke, kiddo, and you fell for it. Congrats.”

The boy stared at him, pupil wide, before frowning. “That makes no sense!”

“Sense is overrated. I am the real deal, little guy. _I am real,_ and you are not.”

“You’re crazy!”

“Yup, that too! See, you’re starting to get it!” Bill confirmed, and opened his hand, twisting his wrist so that the boy would fall on his upturned palm. “Don’t believe me? Is it proof you want?”

“CIPHER!” Ford roared, struggling uselessly to break free of the chains. “LEAVE HIM ALO--”

 _“Take a good look, kiddo!”_ Bill snarled, and ignited his hand.

* * *

Billy screamed and screamed and screamed.

Out of all the horrible things Ford had heard echoing through his mind since the merging had started, that piercing, continuous shriek had to be the very worst one - drowning out Cipher’s laughter, and his own shouts as he struggled to somehow break free of his bonds. He tried to will the chains into breaking, but with no result; he may have been able to will things into happening in the Mindscape before, but now it was no longer his own Mindscape to control, and his grip on it had weakened too much. Even in there, he was powerless.

In the end, the shrieking ceased. It did not die down: it simply was cut off, abruptly as it had started. Stanford watched, eyes wide, as Bill extinguished the flames and pulled back his hand. He had dreaded seeing a charred, blackened form where Billy had been, but he seemed unscathed by the flames, not a mark on him.

Except that he wasn’t moving. He stayed still, suspended in the air, thin black limbs completely limp; his eye was wide open, but filled with nothing but gray static, like a broken television screen. Then that disappeared, too: the boy blinked and his eye returned to normal, the pupil blown wide with… disbelief? Surprise? Horror? It was hard to tell. What Stanford could tell, however, was that it was the gaze of someone who _knew._

And when he spoke moments later, his voice thin as glass, there was no mistaking the hurt in it. “... You said that was the Third Dimension. You said we were going to New Jersey.”

_You said I was going to change the world!_

“I…”

“You lied,” Billy choked out. “My home is gone. I’m not _real,_ I’m going nowhere and you _lied_.”

_Bill! You lied to me!_

“Aww, that’s harsh,” Bill cackled, giving Ford a one-eyed wink. “You didn’t quite lie, didya? Just kept relevant bits under wraps and let an overactive imagination fill the blanks. You didn’t need to lie. Feels familiar?”

_You believed the shadows on the wall were real._

I am nothing like you, Ford wanted to say, but words wouldn’t leave him: all he could do was stare at the boy. “Billy…” he finally managed to force out, but he had no time to say more. With a shrug, Bill reached to grab the boy again.

“Yep, boohoo indeed. Enough drama, kiddo. Get back in your memory and let the _grownups_ talk. We got business to discuss,” he said, and casually flung him behind his back like he was discarding a used tissue.

Unlike Stanley, unlike their younger selves, Billy didn’t scream as he fell. He made no sound. He didn’t even try to reach out.

The fog swallowed him, and he was gone.


	11. Return of the King

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> About the chapter's title: I know. Believe me, _I know._ I have no excuses. I just couldn't resist.

“Oow, my head…”

“Stanley! Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I think? Just… where are we?”

“I’m not sure. It could be either Mindscape. He threw us pretty far,” young Stanford admitted, reaching to grab his brother’s hand and help him up. It had been real lucky that they had been able to reach out and grasp each other’s hand during the fall: if they had fallen in different places, they may have wandered for a very long time before finding each other again… if they ever did. The mere thought of having to walk through that nothingness all alone was terrifying beyond words.

“Do you think the others are okay?” Stanley was asking, brushing his trousers as though to get rid of dust that wasn’t there. It was something he did often back in their memory, to get rid of the sand, so it was more of a habit than anything else.

“I… I don’t know,” Stanford said, looking around. “I mean, I don’t think Bill can actually destroy any of them in the Mindscape, but--”

He trailed off when somewhere - above them, below them, all around, everywhere - Billy began shrieking, and then _kept shrieking._ It was so loud it hurt their ears, but neither of them tried to cover them: they just clung to each other, shaking, until the scream was suddenly cut off. Then, silence.

The twins kept clinging to each other for a good while afterwards, barely daring to breathe.

* * *

“Stanford! Can you hear me? Kids! Ford! SOMEONE!”

Stan’s voice seemed to echo all around him, but other than that he could hear nothing, much less a reply: now that the shriek had been cut off - and Stan really didn’t want to focus on what that implied - everything was silent again. All around him he could see nothing but whiteness. He was lost, hell if he knew in _whose_ mind, and his brother was nowhere to be found, in the clutches of that… that _monster._ And he couldn’t do a thing to help him; he had let himself be swatted away like a fly, and had failed to do anything for his brother. He had failed him. Again.

_Some brother I turned out to be._

It had been his fault, all of it. If he hadn’t damaged Stanford’s project, if he’d gone to his dream university, then maybe he would have never come to that damn town to begin with. He’d have never crossed paths with a _demon_ of all things. He’d be rich and happy - why couldn’t he let him be rich and happy? Let him go his way instead of being selfish and clinging to him?

He hadn’t damaged his perpetual motion machine on purpose, but when it had happened he hadn’t been sorry - hadn’t even _apologized_ to him for costing him his dream school: he’d just begun talking about treasure hunting together, like Stanford being denied his dream meant nothing, not even enough to warrant an apology.

_Look, this was a mistake! Although if you think about it, maybe there's a silver lining. Huh? Treasure hunting?_

Silver lining, he had said.

_Silver lining my ass._

With a groan, Stan pressed his hands on his face and let himself rest back against one of the closed doors that littered the Mindscape, shrouded in mist. If only he could go back, undo that one mistake - he’d do anything to be able to do that. Sure, Stanford would have gone to college without him, but they would have still seen each other: he could have visited him and what the hell, they could have spent their vacations together on their boat - he’d have come to pick him up from his fancy-dancy college and then they’d sail home.

He’d still be welcome then, they’d see their parents and Shermie and little Sam - he must have gotten so big now, Stan hadn’t seen him since he was a baby. They’d sit at the kitchen table, their mother would make pancakes and say--

“Want some Maple syrup to go with it?”

Yeah, that. And then she’d-- wait. What?

“... Huh?”

Stan blinked, pulling his hands away from his face and looking around. Around him there was still nothing but mist, with nothing and no one in sight. And yet he’d heard someone speaking; he’d heard his mother speaking, clear as day. But where…?

“Maple syrup makes everything better!”

The door. His mother’s voice had come from beyond the door he was leaning onto.

Stan immediately turned and, without even thinking, he reached for the doorknob, the knot of shame in his stomach already turning into something entirely different: _longing._ He hadn’t seen her in so long, and had heard her voice so very few times, he couldn’t even bring himself to pause for a moment and think it over. He just pulled the knob down, opening the door to one of his brother’s memories. And the first thing he saw, the very first thing, her smile.

“Hello, sweetheart,” Maureen Pines said, and tilted her head towards the stove. “Pancakes?”

* * *

_“Cipher, let me go!”_

“Funny you’d say that. Thought it was my line. Hey, mind if I take _your_ line in return? I believe it was something along the lines of ‘nope’. Just with a lot more words because you want to sound all heroic and stuff.”

With a snarl, Ford twisted once more in his bonds. Again, it was useless: the chains around his wrists, ankles and neck kept him still where he was, suspended in mid-air before Cipher’s huge form. “What do you think you’re going to obtain? You can’t harm me in here, and once I wake up I’ll simply-- what is it?” he asked, blinking as Cipher laughed.

“Hahaha! Oooh man, you’re a riot. What, did you think those chains are there just for entertainment? Because they look good on ya?” Bill asked, circling him. “Nope! I mean, yeah, they do become you if you ask to me, but that’s not it. Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but… nah, scratch that. I love it. Those chains serve a specific purpose, old pal. As long as you wear them, you’re stuck here. In other words…” the eye loomed over him, blood-red and impossibly big. _“You can’t wake up again in the real world.”_

The prospect of never awakening was horrible, but it was nowhere near the worst price Ford had been prepared to pay. He’d been aware of the possibility things could go horribly wrong.

_Stan? However this goes, you did all that could be done. If I don’t make it, then it will have been my own fault. Promise me you won’t think you’re to blame for any of this._

He had promised, and Ford could only hope he would make good on that promise. With a deep breath, he closed his eyes for a moment before opening again, his features twisting in a sneer. “Is that supposed to scare me, Cipher? Are you hoping this will convince me to let you out of here? You’re delusional. I will never--”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re gonna play the hero to the end. I got it the first hundred times you said it,” Bill cut him off with a dismissive wave of his hand. “It ain’t _you_ I’m counting on, Sixer. It’s good old Mullet.”

“Stanley…?”

“Yep! He can’t stay in your mind forever, Brainiac; sooner or later, he’ll either leave or be kicked out of it when his body wakes up, because you have given _him_ permission to come and go as he pleases - talk about playing favorites. And this time he’ll wake up knowing I’m real,” Bill added, putting some emphasis on the last word. Ford almost wondered about that, but then Bill spoke again, and it was as though someone had just punched him.

“So, imagine the scene, will ya? Your dumb brother wakes up, but _you_ don’t. No matter what he does, he can’t get you to awaken. He may try come be back in your mind with your handy little incantation, but he can’t do anything against me and I ain’t letting you out of here. We both come out, or neither does. How desperate would he be, then? Desperate enough to make a deal, if you ask to me. If he wants you back, he’ll have to remove that plate and let me out. My freedom for yours. Can you see how that’s gonna end, Stanford? ‘Cause _I_ can.”

Stanford stared at him, his blood running cold. “No,” he breathed. “No! It won’t work! Stan would never--”

Bill laughed again, and reached to flick his nose. “Aww, your denial is adorable! But he would and he will, Fordsy. We both know it. No all-seeing eye needed to see where _this_ is heading.”

“He knows that the fate of our world--”

“Oh, _puh-leeze._ Mullet doesn’t give a hoot about the fate of your world if _you’re_ not in it, Sixer. Haven’t you figured it out yet? You’re more important than anything else to that sad sack of dumb. Geez, and here I thought you were a smart guy for a hairless ape. Though to be fair, one’s got to wonder how come he’s that eager to be your loyal mutt. Given how you rejected him and all when he showed up to help your sorry backside.”

“Stanley is no mutt,” Stanford snarled. “And he… he would never remove that plate!”

Bill laughed, reaching to tilt his chin up with a finger so that Stanford would be forced to stare at him in the eye. His reflection stared back, wide-eyed and horrified.

“You keep telling yourself that, IQ, but we both know he would. To save you, he _will,_ once he gets desperate enough. And you know what?” he added, pulling his hand away, eye crinkling with amusement. “The moment I’m free to go, I’ll take over your body one last time just to _destroy_ it, right in front of him. I’m really gonna enjoy that moment. Maybe he’ll want to join you. Would serve him _right_ for thinking I was just a figment of your pathetic little imagination!”

Something about Bill’s words caused Stanford’s horrified expression to turn into a perplexed frown. Of all things that had happened to infuriate him, he’d have expected Bill to list _being trapped_ as the main reason for his fury; he’d have expected said fury to be directed to him. And instead it was directed to Stanley for just not believing in his existence. There had actually been something about his voice before, when he had first revealed to him that Stanley didn’t believe him to be real. Something that was not anger.

_He doesn’t think I’m real! Can you believe that? Mullet thinks - hahahahah! Hear this out, Sixer - he thinks you made me up! Ain’t that a kick in the pants?_

Hysteria, that was the word he was looking for. There had been an edge of hysteria to his vice even as he laughed at Stanley’s belief he was nothing but a product of his imagination.

_DO I LOOK REAL ENOUGH NOW?_

And then, the way he had spoken to Billy…

_I am the real deal, little guy. I am real, and you are not._

There had been something else, too; a scream that had echoed in Ford’s mind earlier that day, as he stood with his brother in the hospital’s waiting room. Right then, he hadn’t quite caught the words; _now_ he could recall them with sudden, sharp clarity.

_I AM REAL!_

There had been more than anger in that scream, more than hysteria - there had been desperate denial.

_No no no no NO! I am real! I AM REAL! Can you hear me, Mullet? I don’t know what you think you’re playing at, but it ain’t gonna work because I AM REAL!_

Stanley couldn’t hear him, but Stanford had, on a subconscious level. And now he remembered. Now, suddenly, he knew where to strike - and he didn’t need to free his hands in order to hurt. After all, the mind had always been his one true weapon.

And he could tell now that he hadn’t been the only one to deal with side effects of the merging.

“... A figment of my pathetic little imagination,” he said slowly. “Tell me one thing, Cipher. What makes you _so_ sure that’s not what you are?”

Bill’s laugh was cut off just like Billy’s scream earlier. His whole form stiffened, and his eye shifted wordlessly down on him; he said nothing, and it was the only reply Stanford needed. For the first time, it was his turn to see beyond the lies and the delusions to see what lay beneath - and what he could see, plain as day, was _fear._

_I am real!_

Stanford Pines and let his et his lips curl upwards in a feral smile before speaking again to say one truth, and one lie. “You’re not so sure anymore,” he stated. “And now, neither am I.”

* * *

“If this is a dream, don’t wake me up.”

“You know it is. Well, in a way.”

“Don’t wake me up.”

“Oh, dear. I’d never wish to.”

Stan swallowed a lump in his throat and just kept clinging to his mother. Last time he had seen her he was only slightly taller than her, but now she could barely rest her cheek against his shoulder, heels and all. And she was doing just that, holding him in a tight hug that seemed to last forever. He could smell her perfume, and along with the familiar scent of pancakes in their kitchen it almost, almost made him tear up.

Hell, Stan kinda _wanted_ it to last forever. And a day. And then maybe, just maybe, he’d get enough of--

“Ah-hem.”

The sound was enough for the warm feeling in Stan’s chest to turn into dread, because he knew who that was. He’d heard that throat being cleared too many times to mistake it, even after more than ten years away.

He disentangled himself from his mother’s embrace and forced himself to turn to the kitchen table, where of course his father sat just as he used to - leaning on the backrest, shades to hide his eyes, hat firmly on his head and newspaper in his hands.

“Dad…”

“Don’t _dad_ me. What are you doing here?” his father cut him off, hardly looking up from the newspaper, and his words were like a punch in the gut.

_Well this time you cost our family potential millions! And until you make us a fortune, you aren't welcome in this household!_

“Look, I… I’m workin’ on it,” he found himself saying, each word hard to even pronounce, as though his tongue had turned into lead in his mouth. He may be in Ford’s mind, and the Filbrick Pines he was looking at may not be the real deal, but he was suddenly desperate to defend himself all the same. “There’s been a setback or two or twenty, but once it’s out of the way--”

With a scoff, Filbrick Pines closed the newspaper, threw it on the table and stood. “Your head is just as thick as I remember it, only that now you have appalling hair on top of it,” he said, stepping closer. Faintly, Stanley took notice of how they now stood at same height, able to look at each other squarely in the eye without Stan having to look up. “The hell are you talking about? There’s a demon in your brother’s mind, and you call it a setback?”

Stan blinked. “You know about Bill?”

“That annoying little monster has been here--”

“He _likes_ my pancakes and _says_ as much, unlike a certain someone,” Maureen Pines piped in, crossing her arms and leaning against the kitchen counter. Her husband did not respond, or even pause, still staring straight at Stan. Or at least, Stan assumed he was. Sometimes it was hard to tell, with the shades he hardly ever took off.

“... Prattling on about how he’s going to end both of you. How could Stanford grow up in a pawn shop and not recognize a crook, even a _supernatural_ one, when he sees it, is beyond me,” he added, crossing his arms. “You wouldn’t have fallen for it one moment.”

Wait. Had his father just said…?

“I--” Stan began, but Filbrick held up a hand to cut him off yet again.

“So let me ask again - what _are_ you doing in here?” he asked before jabbing a finger against his chest. “Why aren’t you out there, socking that _thing_ in the eye? You used to have a decent left hook, and used it more than once to get Stanford out of trouble. I should hope you still remember how to throw a punch, or else those boxing lessons were a complete waste of time and money.”

… Wait. So that was what it had been about? Not about the money he hadn’t made yet? He wasn’t asking why he was back in his household without it - he had been asking why he was in that memory and not out there helping Ford out.

“Because I can’t,” Stan found himself blurting out. “I tried and I failed - I couldn’t even begin to land a blow on that triangular fu--”

“Stanley! Language!” his mother chided him, causing him to wince.

“Right, right. Sorry. I just… I fail at everything,” he added. Looking back at his father felt like the hardest thing he’d ever had to do. “This was all my fault. You were right to kick me out. I ruined everything.”

His father tilted his head, shades catching the light coming from the window for a moment, and let out a hum. “Mmmh.”

“... Aren’t you going to say anything? Like, ‘it wasn’t your fault’, or--”

“No. Are _you_ going to shut the hell u--”

_“Filbrick Pines!”_

“... Heck,” his father corrected himself without missing a beat and entirely unfazed. “Shut the heck up and _do_ something. If you’ve got a problem, you either go solve it or shut up. Life gets hard and you should _know_ you can’t make it any easier by whining at it.”

“He’s too strong. I couldn’t even land a punch or--”

“So throw another. Isn’t that how a fight works? You don’t stop hitting just because the first punch wasn’t enough. You keep going until you’re on the ground or they are. That’s what you used to do when someone picked on your brother. And now you’re just going to run off and whine? Stanford can’t do this on his own and you damn well know it.”

The mention of Stanford felt like a bucket of cold water being poured on him, and Stan recoiled. That was true - what the hell had he been thinking? Ford was out there, and he needed his help. He had to _find_ him. If all of that was really his fault, then it was all the more reason to do all he could to set things right again.

“Right. I… I got lost, found this door, and… I really should go,” Stan said, his mouth dry, and turned to his mother. “It’s… been good to see you.”

His mother smiled and stepped closer to give him a tight hug, which Stan found himself returning with a lump in his throat.“Come home soon in the real world, both of you,” she said before pulling back and reaching up to run a hand through his hair. “My little free spirit, not so little anymore. And don’t listen to him,” she added with a wink, her voice dropping in a perfectly audible whisper. “I think your hair looks great. He’s just jealous because his is thinning under that hat.”

If Filbrick Pines had heard her, nothing showed on his face - and Stan didn’t pay much attention to it anyway. He was too busy smiling down at his mother and trying hard not to cry. “... Sure, Ma. Will fix this mess and then we’ll both drop by.”

She smiled again, and stepped back. Stan turned to look at his father.

“Dad,” he hard himself saying, his own voice distant. “I know this isn’t real, but… I tried to imagine coming home so many times, and there are so many things I’d like to do and say--”

“Then get on with it,” his father said. “If you want to do something, you either do it or shut up about it. Got it?”

Stan smiled. “Got it,” he said, and punched him in the face has hard as he could, catching him right on the jaw with his knuckles.

Filbrick Pines fell back against the wall and then on the floor, causing Maureen to sigh and throw up her hands. “Boys,” she muttered, and walked off, leaving Stan to stare down at his father as he steadied himself, reached up for his jaw, and then looked up at him. His shades askew, one of his eyes was visible, and Stan could see for just a moment the way it crinkled upwards; along with a twitch of his mustache, was the only visible sign of rare smiles.

“Good shot,” he said, and stood, adjusting his shades, expression once again impassable. There was no outward sign of the blow, but Stan knew it was something he had to put down to the fact they were not in the real world. “Not a waste of time and money, after all. But you could use a little extra help,” he added, and snapped his fingers.

Something cold materialized in Stan’s hands, around his fingers, and he looked up to see a set of brass knuckles that hadn’t been there before. “Wha…?”

“We’re in your brother’s mind, knucklehead. You can make things real by willing it - or make yourself bigger, just so say one. That should even the playing field. I trust I don’t have to explain you how _those_ work.”

The surprise fading, Stan laughed. “Hah! You bet you don’t,” he said, grinning down at the brass knuckles, and looked back up at his father. They were face to face again, and suddenly the knot in his stomach was back. He shifted a little uneasily. “... Thanks, dad,” he said, and reached out for him. Filbrick Pines didn’t step back, but Stan felt him stiffen.

“What kind of sappy bull-- oof!”

“Wasn’t a hug,” Stan grinned, holding up his fists. “Sucker punch! Had to try out these beauties.”

With a bark that could pass, with some imagination, for a laugh, Filbrick Pines sank on the floor, a hand over his stomach. “Not-- nngh. Not half bad. Feels like you’re good to go.”

Grin widening, Stan turned to look at the door. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Really feels great. See you later Ma! I’ll be home and bring Ford with me!”

“See you, sweetie!” Maureen Pines called out after her son as he ran out of the door, back in the fog of the Mindscape. She smiled at the closing door, and turned to glance down at her husband.  “He really is your boy.”

With a grimace, Filbrick stood upright again, a hand still pressing against his stomach. Still, his mustache quirked upwards for just one moment before he spoke.

“Yes. I guess he is.”

* * *

“Hey, did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“Shh!” Stanley lifted his hand to shut his brother up and stood still in the mist, eyes straining to catch any sound. There was some whispering in the distance, the kind that could be heard in Bill’s mindscape, so he guessed that was where they were, but had also heard something different, almost like… like…

The sniffling sound reached him again, followed by the light _tap-tap-tap_ of tiny feet on the non-existing floor, and Stanley felt his brother gripping his shoulder.

“I heard it too!” he exclaimed, and immediately stepped forwards, bringing his hands up around his mouth. “Billy! BILLY!” he called out.

His voice echoed in the fog, but there was no answer; the sound of footsteps came to a halt.

“Billy! I know you’re there! It’s us! Stanley and St-- I mean, Nerdy!”

For a few moments there was no reply, and Stanley almost thought that maybe they had heard wrong when Billy suddenly spoke somewhere on their left, invisible but not inaudible. “Liar. Your name is Stanford and you’re just a memory like me. I _know_ it now. I know everything. We’re not real and you’re all liars!”

The sentence ended in a piercing shriek, one that suddenly got closer, and the next moment Stanley felt something hitting him little above the ankle: tiny, clenched fists. “LIARS!” Bill shrieked again. _“Liars liars liars liars--”_

“Wha-- Billy! Billy, wait, we can explain-- OW! OUCH! He bit me! Get him off!”

“Billy, please…!”

Tiny as he was, Billy put up one heck of a fight: by the time he was secured in Stanford’s grasp, kicking and yelling and held out at arm's length so that he couldn’t try scratching at his face, Stanley’s jeans were ripped in various points and he had several bite marks across both ankles.

“Ow! That hurt! What the--”

“You lied to me! You should have told me I wasn’t real!”

“This _feels_ real and how,” Stanley muttered, reaching down to rub his leg and glaring at Billy. He was no longer yellow, the paint gone. What had happened after they had been swatted away? What had the other Bill done to him? What had he said? “The heck do you mean anyway? Of course you’re real!”

“I’m not! I’m just a memory!”

“Yeah, so are we. Still real.”

“But--”

“We exist on a different plane of existence, but we exist nonetheless,” Stanford spoke up, cutting him off. “I mean, we _are_ here, right? Thinking, feeling, thinking. Cogito ergo sum.”

“... Stanford?”

“Yes?”

“Can you tone it down with the nerd stuff? This ain’t the moment for French.”

“It’s not French, it’s--”

“Whatever. Still not the right moment,” Stanley said, rolling his eyes, and turned his attention back on Billy. He had stopped kicking, stopped struggling: he was still in Stanford’s grasp, thin black arms and legs limp, eye moving slowly back and forth between them. “Look, what he said. I’m sorry we lied to your. Stanford - the other Stanford - thought it would be best if you didn’t know. And… you were having so much fun. _We_ were having so much fun, right?”

“I…” Billy began, and fell silent. Tears welled up in his eye and Stan found himself sniffling.

“Aw, c’mon! Not fair - don’t do that!” he protested, wiping his nose. “If you cry then I’ll cry and Poindexter will cry and--”

“Billy, please,” Stanford spoke up before Stanley’s voice had the time to break. “I know we should have told you, but listen to me. You’re real. As real as we are, anyway.”

Billy turned to look at him, and let out a tiny hiccupping noise. Being entirely gray again made him look all the more miserable. “It’s gone,” he choked out, reaching up to wipe his eye. “My home is _gone._ There was something important there, and I want it back. I _know_ I want it back, but I can’t remember what it was…”

“We can find out,” Stanford said, and reached up to place Billy on top of his head. “Remember what we told you about a locked door?”

“Hu-hu.”

“Well, it’s locked because you-- I mean, Cipher locked away some memories he clearly wanted to forget all about. We think that’s why you can’t remember how you got those books about the Third Dimension, for example. We’ve got to find out, and… well…”

“Then you’ll know what it is,” Stanley immediately supplied. “And maybe it will be something we can kick Cipher’s angle with. We’ll do just that and then go back to Glass Shard Beach. And have ice cream!”

Billy seemed to perk up considerably - Stanley wasn’t sure if it was for the ice cream or the angle-kicking part - and seemed to consider the proposal. Then, finally, “Okay. But… what _is_ a New Jersey? I know we’re not going there, but what is it?”

“That’s where we were! Glass Shard Beach _is_ in New Jersey. In _our_ New Jersey. That’s why we’re the kings of it! So,” he added, holding a finger up to Bill. “Kings of New Jersey? Shake on it for yes!”

There was a moment of silence, then Billy nodded - or at least made a movement that looked kinda like a nod - and reached out, his other hand holding onto Stanford’s hair. He grabbed Stanley’s finger and shook it. “Kings of New Jersey!”

“Great! Now pull my fing--”

“ _Don’t_ pull his finger,” Stanford said quickly, pushing Stanley away, but he did laugh along with them before sobering up. “All right. Billy, we need you to focus on what you’re missing. The things you can’t remember, and… and try to visualize a locked door, okay? It’s somewhere here and you’re our best bet at finding it.”

Another sort-of-nod, and Billy closed his eye. He stayed like that for what felt like a long time, leaving Stanley and Stanford to quizzically glance at each other. Then, one moment before Stanley asked if everything was okay or if he’d just fallen asleep, he opened it again and spoke, pointing to their left.

“That way. There’s _something_ there and I think that’s it.”

Stanley followed his finger; all he could see was fog, in no way different from what they could see in every other direction. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Do you just… know it?” Stanford asked.

“Yes,” Billy said, his eye narrowing, and suddenly his voice was much, much colder. It made the hair on Stanford’s neck stand on end. “I know lots of things now. _Lots_ of things.”

* * *

“Wha-- what are you talking about? Of course I’m real. You _know_ I’m real!”

“... Do I? Perhaps Stanley was right. Perhaps I am crazy, after all.”

“YOUR STUPID BROTHER WAS HERE WITH US BEFORE I SWATTED HIM--”

“My brother, of a projection of him?” Stanford cut him off. “One I just made up in my mind. Like the kids. Like the other Bill. Like yourself,” he added. There was a look on his face Bill hadn’t seen on him before: a calm, almost emotionless sort of smile. It was utterly unlike him. It was made him look way to the left of sanity, the kind of guy who had permanently moved from Sanity Square to Crazy Plaza.

_Perhaps I am crazy, after all._

No…

_"I can prove it to you! I have access to every corner of your brother’s mind! I know things only the two of you could--"_   
_"Of course you can. You did come from his mind, after all."_   
_"I DID NOT!"_ _  
_ "Then prove it!"

No.

_You’re as real as I am._

No!

_You are not powerful and never were. Stanford’s mind is falling apart and so are you, because you never existed out of it._

“NO!” Bill shrieked. “Shut up shut up shut UP! I am real! I KNOW I’M REAL!”

“You _think_ you’re real. The other Bill did, too,” Stanford countered, still insanely calm, gaze steady and voice even. “He was certain of it, until _you_ told him otherwise. How can you be certain you’re any different?”

Behind him, all around him, voices were whispering again. Millions of voices, in millions of languages long-dead, but they all said the same thing.

_You’re not real. You were never real._

_No no no no NO!_

“SHUT UP!” Bill screeched, and lifted his arms. A ring of blue fire rose all around him and Stanford, blocking out everything else - the fog, the colors, the voices, everything. But once, long ago, those flames had made people scream. His people. His dimension. He had burned it all - burned them all - and he knew that was real. It _had_ to be. “I am Bill Cipher. The All Seeing Eye! All-powerful! I am real - I have been real before any of this galaxy was!” he howled, and glared down at Stanford with a blood red eye. Stanford met his gaze with a raised eyebrow.

“To quote a certain someone, I am not impressed. The All Seeing eye, who couldn’t see a metal plate coming? All-powerful, and yet trapped by said piece of metal?”

Something in Bill’s core felt cold, but he forced himself to ignore it, mind racing for a retort. “I… I… Hah! Your friend has seen me! FIDDLESTICKS! HE SAW ME!” he cried out, and he laughed and laughed. “He knows I am real! He--”

“He’s not a model of mental health though, is he?”

What cut him off wasn’t what Stanford said as much as it was the way he had said it: he sounded almost bored. Bill found himself staring, dumbfounded, as he shrugged as much as the bonds allowed him to. “He was always superstitious, and easy to impress. And when I began acting odd, when you _possessed_ me,” he added, marking the word in a way that made it clear he would have made quote marks in the air if his hands were free, “It was so very easy for him to believe there was truly something supernatural going on. That whatever he saw in the portal had be my so-called Muse. A being who never existed outside my mind. All that you remember, all you think is true - all of it, it’s nothing but a delusion. Mine.”

_“Shut up! That’s not true!”_ Bill screamed, igniting his hands. If he didn’t shut up now he’d _make_ him - he’d rip out his tongue, he’d make him scream until his vocal chords tore, he… he…! _“NONE OF IT IS TRUE!”_

“You included,” Ford said quietly, then smiled. “There is yet another thing that the so-called All Seeing Eye failed to anticipate.”

Bill blinked, his fury fading just enough for him to ask. “And what would that--”

_“Left hook!”_

He turned, and it was a mistake: before he could even really look, something hit him square in the eye, causing him to cry out and press both hands on it, rearing back. Over his own scream, he heard a laugh.

“Too slow, Freakshow. Ain’t impressed. Ready for a second round? ‘Cause _I_ am,” Stanley Pines called out, floating before him, far larger than he had any right to be. He grinned, his eyes reflecting the fire, and he held up massive fists covered in golden brass knuckles. Despite the blow that had blurred his vision, Bill could make out some letters engraved on the metal.

_King of New Jersey._

“Look at me, and take a _good_ look,” Stanley snarled. His eyes no longer seemed to be reflecting the flames: it was as though they burned with a fire of their own.  “I’ll be the last thing your All Seeing Eyeball is _ever_ gonna see.”


	12. Gone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well.  
> This one was _fun_ to write.

“What does it mean, we could have been doing _this_ all along?”

“Well, we’re in the mindscape, so we can make things happen by just willing it. And going by boat is a _lot_ faster.”

“And you only thought of it now?”

“Hey, at least I _did_ think of it! And before Stanford did! So I was smarter this ti--”

“Stan, stop distracting him! He’s got to focus!” Stanford cut him off, still somewhat annoyed that he hadn’t been the one to think of it in the first place. As the Stan O’ War flew swiftly through the fog as though on water, he had to admit it had been a pretty good idea. “Billy, are we still going the right way?”

Billy didn’t answer at first, eye still fixed in the fog ahead of them. The murmuring voices were getting louder, the sudden flashes of color around them brighter and more defined; if he squinted, Stanford could make out the outlines of door appearing and disappearing, melting away and changing appearance. Even without mist, it seemed like the kind of place where getting lost would be incredibly easy and finding the way out nearly impossible.

And yet, Billy seemed to have no doubts.

“Yes,” he said after a few moments of silence. “It’s this way. Just a little more to the right,” he added. Behind them, Stanley immediately turned the rudder accordingly.

“You gotta say ‘starboard’ on a ship,” he called out. “Didn’t know that, huh?”

“Hey, I said I know _lots_ of things. Not everything,” Billy muttered, shifting a little in Stanford’s hair. Stanford took the chance to ask something he’d been wondering for a bit.

“What do you mean by it? What kind of things do you know now? Did he… did the other Bill pass his knowledge on to you?”

“... Some,” Billy said slowly, then, “I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“I understand.”

“No. You don’t.”

“I’m trying to, though,” Stanford said, his voice low, and reached up to take Billy off his head, letting him sit in his cupped hands. “And I know a few things, too.”

“Like what?”

“You’re scared,” he replied. Billy said nothing, but the way he hugged his knees spoke volumes. Stanford paused for a moment before daring speak again. “I… we’re kinda scared, too. I mean--”

“I am not!” Stanley piped in from behind them. Stanford rolled his eyes.

“Yes, you are. We all are. We don’t know what’s behind that door and it could be something horrible, but--”

“It will make him mad.”

“Huh?” Stanford looked down at his hands to see Billy standing up, grabbing his thumb for support. He looked up at him, gaze unwavering.

“When he destroyed… when he burned home, he was angry. Really angry. That’s why he did it. But I don’t know what made him so angry,” he added, and frowned. “And I don’t think he knows, either. But when we open that door, we’ll know and so will he.”

“And it will make him angry?”

“Furious.”

“And you just know it?”

“Sorta,” Billy said, and paused again, turning to glance at the fog. “... I think it’s gonna hurt him, too. I _hope_ it’s gonna hurt him.”

There was a coldness in his voice that hadn’t been there before, and Stanford had to repress a shiver - but was unable to repress a worried frown. “Wouldn’t that hurt you, too?”

A shrug. “Maybe. I don’t know that. I’m just guessing.”

“Is that why you’re scared?”

Billy tried and failed to hold his gaze. For the first time, he looked away first. “... Yeah.”

“You won’t be doing this alone, though. We’re gonna be there,” Stanford said, bringing Bill up to his same eye level, and made an effort to smile. “So we can be scared together.”

“And scream real loud?”

“As loud as we can,” Stanford said solemnly. “Until our heads pop!”

Billy frowned. “But I don’t have a head to pop,” he pointed out, clearly disappointed.

“Your eye, then!” Stanley piped in, still steering the boat. “You can try screaming so loud your eye pops! How about that?”

“Hmm…” Billy mumbled, frowning in thought, then his eye crinkled in amusement. “Yes! That sounds fun. I like fun!”

“Well, who doesn’t? Except our old man, that is,” Stanley said with a shrug. “So, how much longer to the Door of Fun?”

That caused Billy to blink. “Oh! Right! Turn the boat!”

“Wait, you mean we passed it?”

“Just a minute ago. Turn back!”

“You’re a _terrible_ guide.”

“Hey, the nerd here distracted me!”

“I was just trying to be helpful!” Stanford protested. Neither Billy nor Stan listened to him, but he made a point of pouting for the next couple of minutes - until it was time to throw the anchor and climb down. Until they found himself facing an old wooden door kept closed by chains and a formidable-looking padlock that glowed a faint blue. At that point, before the door containing who knew what unspeakable horrors even Bill Cipher refused to face, he was too excited and scared to pout. So he settled for grabbing Stanley’s hand and squeezing it. Hard.

“Kings of New Jersey?” he found himself whispering, and Stanley squeezed his hand back.

“Kings of New Jersey,” he repeated, and they both turned to Billy, who was now hovering - just _hovering,_ like Cipher would often do - before the door, only inches away from the padlock. Despite it and the chains, the door looked ordinary - uncannily so, in a place like Bill Cipher’s mindscape. It was like it didn’t belong there, among ever-changing shapes and colors - a fragment of normalcy that had somehow been slipped in the midst of madness.

Or maybe it was the other way around. Maybe it was a shred of sanity that had always been there, and resisted the corruption of everything _else_ in that mindscape.

And yet, Cipher feared whatever was locked in there. Why else would be lock it up? Why else would he want to forget all about it? Cipher was _afraid,_ he had to be… and so was Billy. He was still motionless, a tiny hand pausing in the air a scant inch from the padlock. For a moment, Billy hesitated and Stanford found himself listening to the thumping of his own heart, drowning out all other noises, all of the whispers in the mist.

“Go ahead,” Stanley spoke first, trying to keep his voice steady. He didn’t quite succeed, but it was a valiant attempt. “Whatever happens, we’ll be right here.”

 _Until the end of time,_ Stanford almost added, but did not. “Do you think--” he began instead, but Billy cut him off with a sudden laugh - high-pitched, unhinged, scarily close to Cipher’s.

“No. I _never_ think,” he said, and reached to grasp the padlock.

_STAY AWAY FROM IT! NO! DON’T YOU DARE!_

Bill Cipher’s voice boomed all around them when Billy’s hand was just about to touch the lock. Stanley and Stanford huddled close together. Billy laughed again.

“You can’t tell me what to do!” he shrieked back. “ _No one_ tells me what to do!”

_Don’t do it! NO! PLEASE!_

“I hope this hurts,” Billy growled, and his hand closed on the padlock. “Take a _good_ look.”

It burst in blue flames, and the chains fell with a clatter.

* * *

When the chains holding his arms up broke like wet paper, freeing him, Ford barely took notice. All he could focus on, as he remained suspended in the air, was the rather unexpected - but very much appreciated - sight of his brother punching the hell out of Bill Cipher.

It was like being in school all over again, with Stanley standing between him and his tormentors, only just about a million times more epic due to the upgrade from schoolyard bullies to all-powerful demon. Except that he didn’t seem all-powerful _now:_ there was an attempt at turning himself into something else, something red and black and horrifying, but Stanley had hit him again and again, causing that new form to flicker out of existence. Bill could only holler, staggering back, both hands pressed against his eye.

“No!” he was shrieking. “No no no - you can’t do this, you--”

“CAN IT, FREAKSHOW!” Stanley growled, and struck again, with such force that his punch opened a _hole_ barely below Cipher’s eye. There was another scream of pain, and now was Bill’s entire for to flicker. For a moment it looked as though his frame was about to _melt,_ and Ford could tell - whether it was simple intuition or the result of the mental bond between them, he wasn’t sure - that it took Cipher a terrible effort to keep it from happening, to make the gaping hole close up again.

_He’s losing it. He’s falling apart._

A sort of terrible, savage joy filled him, and Ford found himself laughing. “You see what I mean now? How can you be real, let alone _all powerful,_ if I can have you beaten by simply creating a projection of my brother in my mind? You never existed outside my mind, Cipher!”

“NO!”

“... Huh?”

As Bill screamed again, hands still pressed against his eye, Stanley turned to glance at him. He was breathing heavily, fists still raised, but the triumphant grin was fading, replaced by confusion. He seemed about to say something, but paused when Ford met his gaze.

_Trust me. Just play along._

As children, they were able to tell each other everything they needed in one glance. After over ten years, despite all of their mistakes, despite all of what they had both been through, he was relieved to see that had not changed: the confusion on Stanley’s face faded, and the grin was back. He nodded, and looked back at Cipher with a laugh.

“What, did you think _I_ was the real deal, Eyeball? Am not! _Neither_ of us is!” Stanley called out, bringing his arm back to strike again. Cipher saw it coming and lifted his arms to block the blow, but Stanley was faster, and his fist connected with his eye again, going _through_ it. There was a disgusting squelching noise and then another, agonizing scream. Black hands clawed at the empty hole left in the middle of Cipher’s frame, what remained of his eye dripping down into the nothingness below like a revolting parody of a broken egg. “You ain’t nothing but some lousy creation of my brother’s brain, and I’m gonna erase you from it once and for all!”

“NO! I AM REAL!” Cipher howled, blindly lashing out, missing Stanley by far and causing him to laugh.

“Hah! A real _loser,_ that is!”

“I HAVE SEEN GALAXIES RISE AND--” Cipher screeched, but he trailed off with another cry when Stanley hit him again, punching another hole in his side. Ford found himself watching in morbid fascination as his frame tried, and _failed,_ to fix itself. Cipher’s scream turned into something different, something not too far away from a wail, and he fell on his knees, still clawing at the black hole where his eye had been.

“No! I am real, Sixer! SIXER! I AM REAL! YOU CAN’T DO THIS TO ME, STANFORD!”

_He’s calling to me. Not to Stan. He doesn’t think Stan is real. He doesn’t think he is real._

One last shove, Ford thought - only last shove, and he’d _crumble._

“I can and I will,” Stanford Pines said. An odd sort of calm pervaded him, the realization that Bill Cipher was coming undone before his eyes giving him a sense of relief he didn’t think he could possibly feel in his life ever again. “I created you, and now I’ll destroy you. I can do it. You are just a sickness.”

“NO! I-- No, what are you doing? Stop it! STOP!”

_“You are nothing!”_

“NO, STOP!” Cipher cried out. “STAY AWAY FROM IT! NO! DON’T YOU DARE!”

… Wait. What?

Confusion replacing the sense of triumph, Ford sought his brother’s gaze to find he seemed equally lost - but only for a moment, because the next Stanley’s gaze widened, and Stanford knew what Cipher was screaming about, what was happening. It wasn’t them he was screaming against; it wasn’t them he was telling to stop. It was the _kids._

_“Don’t do it! NO! PLEASE!”_

Somewhere in the mist, a padlock went up in flames. Chains fell. A door creaked open. Memories came flooding back.

And Bill Cipher _screamed._

It was a scream unlike anything Ford had ever heard before, and unlike anything he’d ever hear again. Wordless, unending, it was like a million of voices joining into one to scream, a trillion years’ worth of agony crashing down on the one ruined form before them. Bill Cipher’s mind, which contained the knowledge of universes, could not cope with the one memory he’d tried to turn his All Seeing Eye from for so long. So it cracked. And _shattered._

All around them, the blue flames roared and burned higher. Stanley, now back to his usual side, came to stand before him, shielding him with his own body, but Ford hardly noticed: all he could stare at was Bill Cipher’s empty orbit, turned towards them.

“NO! MAKE IT STOP! I WANT IT GONE! IT HURTS! MAKE IT END!”

“No,” Ford said. His ears buzzed, his tongue felt too large, but his voice came out deadly calm. “I told you I’d take you down with me, Cipher. This will only end when _you_ do.”

The scream turned into a loud, maniacal laugh so abruptly that, for a moment, Ford didn’t realize it. “HAHAHAHA! IS THAT IT, FORDSY? TWO OF US CAN PLAY THIS GAME!” Cipher screamed, and suddenly, he was surrounded by blue flames - burning away in them. “I GET THE LAST WORD, SIXER! _I’LL_ BE THE ONE TO DRAG YOU DOWN WITH ME! YOU GAVE YOUR _SOUL_ TO ME, UNTIL THE END OF TIME! NO REFUNDS!”

_What…?_

_“Stanford, get down!”_ Stanley threw himself on him one moment before everything around them exploded in flames. They both fell on something hard, and for a moment everything seemed so unbearably hot he was certain they would burn.

Except that they did not. After a few moments the brightness was gone and, when Ford opened his eyes, he could see that so was the fog, and that the whispering had ceased. Around them there was once again the shifting, nonsensical mindscape of Bill Cipher. Except that Bill himself was gone.

“Woohoo!” Stanley yelled, throwing up his arms and improvising a little victory dance. “That’s it! We got rid of him - the triangular fuck is gone! _Kings of New Jersey! Kings of New Jersey! Kings of--_ huh. Hey, Poindexter? Why aren’t you chanting?”

Ford returned his gaze. When he spoke again, his throat felt dry as a desert. “He is not _gone._ If he were, his mindscape wouldn’t exist anymore.”

“Oh. But then… where is he? Where did he go? Oh, wait - do you think he’s after the kids?”

Stanford Pines swallowed before replying, Bill’s last words echoing in his ears.

_I’ll be the one to take you down with me!_

“... Perhaps,” he said, very slowly, and stood. Truth be told, he suspected Cipher had other plans, and not in _that_ plane of existence - the kind of plan that would end them both. But if he told his brother as much, he’d leave his mind right away to go back in the real world… and Ford couldn’t allow that.

Whatever the price, Bill Cipher had to be destroyed, and he knew that Stanley would never do what had to be done. But perhaps… perhaps, if Bill was truly up to do what he suspected, then Fiddleford would.

_Should things take a turn for the worst, should you feel it’s needed, promise me you won’t hesitate. Take my brother out of here and seal me in._

_Stanford, I--_

_Please._

_… I promise._

“Okay, new plan!” Stanley exclaimed, hitting the palm of his left hand with his right fist. “Let’s find the kids, find _him,_ and kick his angle again!”

Ford made an effort to smile, hoping it would look convincing. “It sounds like a good plan,” he said, but looked away almost immediately.

_Forgive me, Stanley._

* * *

The scream came without any warning at all, causing Fiddleford’s heart to jump in his throat and him to stand up like something had just prickled him, the iron crowbar falling from his hand. He bent down to grab it, his grasp so tight his knuckles turned white, and stood to find himself staring at Stanford, screaming and twisting in his bonds.

Except that it was not Stanford. Not at all.

_Those eyes._

Fiddleford had dreaded the moment he found himself having to see those eyes again; he had been certain he would lose his mind if he did and, granted, the sight did make him want to scream, turn and run. But he did none of those things: he stood there, eyes wide, and stared.

Because suddenly, greater than everything, greater than terror, there was confusion.

A long time ago, back in Tennessee, his uncle had caught a coyote in a trap. Not just a coyote - a _rabid_ one. The way that frenzied beast snarled and howled, tearing its paws bloody in the attempt to free itself from the cage while frothing at the mouth was something that had remained with him for a long time to come.

“This beast’s mad. Done for,” his uncle had said, and had gone to fetch the rifle. That was when Fiddleford had left, not wanting to see what would follow. But he’d heard the shot, and how the screams and howls had ceased. He remembered, very clearly, a sense of relief at knowing that something horrible had been removed from the world - that the animal would no longer suffer.

And there he stood now, twenty years later and two thousand miles away, staring at the same horrible spectacle.

The thing within Stanford Pines screamed. It howled and snarled, gnashed its teeth and foamed at the mouth; it twisted in its bonds so violently that it caused the chair he was tied to to fall - so violently that, before Fiddleford horrible gaze, the wooden chair began to creak.

_He’ll break it. He’ll break free, and then--_

“No. Stop,” Fiddleford heard himself rasping. His voice was so low that he could hardly hear it but, somehow, the thing did. The scream turned into a laugh, high and screeching and manic. Those horrible yellow eyes found him and, despite all of his horror, Fiddleford found that he couldn’t turn away. What got him staring in disbelief were not the slit pupils or yellow sclera, not the obvious madness and malice in them: it was the tears.

The _thing_ inside Stanford Pines was weeping.

The realization barely had the time to sink in when Stanford’s features twisted in what could have been a unhinged smile or a snarl, and was probably a bit of both.

“FIDDLESTICKS!” the thing called out, and twisted again. The backrest of the chair snapped, like a knot of old wood in the fire, and the sound caused Fiddleford to recoil. He brought the crowbar before himself, more to have something between him and that monster than because he truly thought of using it. Before his horrified gaze, the thing laughed and stood; with the back of the chair broken, the now useless ropes slid off him like water. “WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR, GLASSES? A FORMAL INVITATION?” it screamed, and laughed. “Let’s make a deal! You want me gone, dontcha? Great! _I want it all gone!_ Come on, Glasses! Put that crowbar to some use!”

The thing laughed again and spread Stanford’s arms, as though calling out for a blow. It was unsteady on its feet, smile impossibly wide even as those unnatural eyes watered, foam still at the corners of his mouth. “We want the same thing, you and I! Swing it, Fiddlesticks!”

“I… I…”

_This beast’s mad. Done for._

_Promise me you won’t hesitate._

“I…!”

“SMASH HIS STUPID SKULL AND MAKE IT ALL END! YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO!” the _thing_ howled, and lunged forward.

For several moments, Fiddleford was unable to move, and the _thing_ would have gotten its hands on him if not for one thing - the ropes. Uncoordinated and entirely out of its mind, the beast found itself tangled in the rope still on the ground, and stumbled. It landed heavily, with a yelp not unlike that of a dog; on the floor, defenseless and only a few feet away from Stanley Pines’ sleeping body, he was an easy target: Fiddleford only had to swing the iron bar to smash his skull.

His grip on it tightened.

Then he turned, and ran.

* * *

When the door creaked open, they had fully expected to see what was nothing short of a pit of hell. Maybe with fire and brimstone and all that because hey, there’s always fire and brimstone in every version of hell or almost.

Instead, they were in a bedroom. Tiny - real tiny, meant for a bring about the same size as Billy - and entirely in black and white and shades of grey. There were books around, and books would usually be the first thing to catch Stanford’s attention, but not that time. All he could stare at right then was the _other_ being in the room.

They had expected monsters. They had expected beasts and shrieking devils, ready to tear them apart - something so horrifying even Bill Cipher couldn’t stand the memory of it. What they got instead was a small, gray triangular being looking back at them with a single wide eye, a book still held in tiny black hands. A _scalene_ triangle, sides and angles mismatched; bigger than Billy, but just slightly.

“Bill?” the being spoke, his voice thin. A boy, Stanford realized, and a confused one at that. “Are those… what’s happening? I… Billy…?”

Stanford’s gaze shifted down to Billy. He was standing at their feet, rigid and still as a statue. For a moment his gray form seemed to ripple, as though about to burst into static again… except that it did not, and Stanford instinctively knew it would never happen again.

_He remembers now._

But remember wha--

“LIAM!”

Bill’s shriek was almost loud enough to hurt his ears, and was followed by a wail no less deafening. Entirely ignoring the way both Stanley and Stanford had winced and covered their ears, Billy bolted straight to the bed and in the arms of the other triangle - who, while looking no less confused, he immediately clung back to him.

“Billy, I don’t understand--”

“They let them take you away,” Billy choked out. “I wasn’t there, and… the Inspection, they...!” his voice broke and he kept crying in unpleasant braying whoops, whatever words tried to leave him afterwards an unintelligible, garbled mess.

“You, uh. Know each other?” Stanley asked somewhat awkwardly and causing the newcomer - well, to him _they_ were the newcomers, really - to look back at him in utter confusion.

“You… what are you? Are you from the Third Dimension? Are _those_ colors? But how… how did my brother find…?”

… Wait. Wait. Wait just a moment there.

 _“Your what?_ ” Stanford blurted out, his voice a couple of octaves higher than usual. Which was pretty embarrassing, really, so later he’d be glad that Bill had spoken again, voice loud enough to cover his own.

“I didn’t _want_ to forget you!” Billy wailed. “I don’t know why _he_ did! I didn’t _mean_ to!”

“Billy--”

_NO! MAKE IT STOP! I WANT IT GONE! IT HURTS! MAKE IT END!_

The scream was suddenly everywhere, and it felt as though the ground was shaking under their feet. Stanford and Stanley exchanged a glance - enough to know they were thinking exactly the same thing: Cipher was mad and hurt, just as Billy had said he would be, and it didn’t take a genius to guess that wasn’t strictly good news. _Things_ happened when Cipher was mad, and rarely good ones. Whatever was gonna happen wouldn’t be pretty, and they probably didn’t want to be in Cipher’s mindscape when it _did._

_I GET THE LAST WORD, SIXER! I’LL BE THE ONE TO DRAG YOU DOWN WITH ME!_

… Yeah, definitely time to get outta there.

“W-what was that?” the triangle - Liam, was that how Billy had called him? - asked, and looked past them through the still open door, to the madness of swirling colors and shifting reality outside. “Who _are_ you?”

“The Kings of New Jersey,” Stanley said, and walked up to them in a couple of strides, grabbing both Liam and Billy in one swoop. “We gotta go now. Will explain everything when we _know_ what the heck is going on.”

“But-- wait, my book…!”

“I’ve got it,” Stanford said, reaching to pick it up, and ran after Stanley. As they climbed back on the Stan O’ War, he glanced at Billy again to see he was still clinging to his brother, eye tightly shut and eyelashes wet with tears.

_They let them take you away!_

_My home is gone. There was something important there, and I want it back. I know I want it back, but I can’t remember what it was._

Now he did. Now he remembered and, in the only way possible, he _did_ have him back. He ought to be happy, and maybe he was, but he was also hurting. Both him and Cipher were.

But Billy had _them,_ and Cipher… didn’t.

* * *

It hurt, it hurt, it _hurt._

Every breath hurt. Every movement hurt. Every beat of that pulsing heart against his ribcage hurt. His head hurt, the whole body flushing hot and cold at the same time, his thoughts a garbled mess he could hardly make sense of.

Good. That was how he wanted it. He didn’t _want_ anything to make sense. He didn’t want to remember. He didn’t want to see. He didn’t want to know.

He wanted it all _gone._

“I know you want it to be over with, Fiddlesticks! Wanna unsee this? SO DO I! Come on! Come here and LET’S MAKE A DEAL!”

His voice echoed in the emptiness of the bunker. If Fiddlesticks was there, he made no sound: all that Bill could hear now where the whispers coming from the back of his own mind, but he forced himself to ignore them - he had ignored them for eons, he could do that for just a little while longer - and turned back the way he had come.

Stanley Pines’ body was still there on the floor, amongst extinguished candles. Entirely defenseless, and it’d be so easy to snuff out his pathetic life… but no. He would not. He wanted him to live. He wanted him to wake up and find out that his precious brother was _gone,_ to suffer for the rest of his days, like… like…!

_Where’s Liam?_

_Gone._

_You let them take him away!_

_Gone._

_He was an Irregular._

_GONE._

“NO!”

_The law is harsh, but it is the la--_

“I DESTROYED YOUR LAWS!” Bill screamed, bringing both hands to his head. It hurt, it _hurt…!_ “I DESTROYED YOUR WHOLE DIMENSION LIKE YOU DESTROYED HIM! I BURNED YOU ALL TO THE GROUND, AND YOUR LAWS MEAN NOTHING! THEY’RE GONE! YOU ARE GONE BECAUSE _I_ WILLED IT!”

_I want it gone!_

The voices picked up again; more than whispering, they now where a buzz - millions of them saying the same thing.

_Tell us now - what was your brother’s name?_

“SHUT UP!” Bill howled, and fell on his knees. That stupid body shook as though caught in a snowstorm, violent shudders making his teeth chatter. Twelve fingers grasped Stanford’s hair, what little had grown back, and clenched. “I don’t want to remember! You can’t make me! You _can’t_ do this to me!”

_His name was Liam._

“You’re ashes and dust and you can’t make me remem--!”

 _We killed him the first time because we didn’t like the way he_ looked. _You killed him a second time because you didn’t like what he_ said. _And then you tried to kill all memory of him, because you didn’t want to live with it._

Something within the ribcage of that useless sack of bones seemed to clench, like a fist had grabbed it and squeezed. Bill tried to cry out again, but the choked-out noise that left him was nothing like a scream.

_No, no, no, no, no!_

“A-ah… Fid… Fiddlesticks! _Come on!_ Come here and do it, you coward!” Bill gritted out. He stood with what felt like an inhuman effort, and stumbled forward. His hands met something cold and smooth, and he leaned on it. He was about to scream again, to call out for Glasses and tell him to come back and end it already, but the voice died in his throat when he saw exactly what it was he had leaned on.

The cryogenic tube, with the Shapeshifter still frozen in it, features twisted in impotent fury.

_… Well. Well well well well well._

Slowly, a grin spread over Stanford Pines’ face. “Tell ya what, Glasses! I’m counting to ten before I free gold old Shifty here!” he called out, a six-fingered hand hovering on the control panel. “I know you’re still here! Wanna see how quickly he can tear us both apart? And maybe he’ll go out there after he’s done with us - how ‘bout that? Did he see that picture of your family, Fids? Think he remembers what they look like? ‘Cause once he’s out there, he might just find them--”

_“Leave them out of this!”_

Grin widening, Bill turned to see Fiddleford Hadron McGucket standing only a short distance away, pale as death, the iron rod held tightly in his good hand. Scared to death and back, but still holding his ground. That was good - it meant he could do what he had to do now, if given the right incentive.

“End me now, or I’ll find them,” he gritted out. “I’ll tear their sanity apart, Fiddlesticks, show them things no human was ever meant to see - things you cannot even begin to imagine! I’ll make _them_ beg for it to be over - how ‘bout that? What will you do when it’s your son asking you to just _finish_ him? And all because you couldn’t do what your old college buddy asked you to do?” he added, and took a step forward. He’d half-expected McGucket to step back, but while he flinched he didn’t move an inch. “You promised. Make good on that promise _now,_ if you’re a man.”

“If you come any closer, I’ll _kill_ you,” McGucket managed to say. He meant to sound threatening and only came across as terrified, but it worked just fine for Bill. It was the _intention_ that counted, and whether or not he’d act on it. So he laughed.

“THAT’S A DEAL!” he screamed, and _charged._

It all happened in a few instants: Fiddlesticks reared back, lifting the hand holding the crowbar, and Bill prepared himself for the impact - the cracking bone, the splattered brains, the end of it all. He prepared himself to be freed. He prepared himself to be gone.

But then McGucket darted aside, and he _saw._ Focused as he was on McGucket, he hadn’t paid attention at what was behind him; he hadn’t wondered how come he had not stepped back when he had expected him to. He now knew that he hadn’t stepped back because he _couldn’t._ Not without revealing his trap.

_NO!_

Bill tried to stop, he really tried, but the momentum worked against him, and when McGucket hit him in the back with the iron bar he was sent sprawling inside the cryogenic tube. With a cry of rage, he tried to turn, to get out - but he was never given a chance to. The door was slammed shut in his face and, the next moment, the cryogenic tube was activated: Bill heard the sounds of it coming to life through Stanford’s thumping heart, through his own screams.

“No! Let me out of here! Let me out! JUST MAKE IT STOP!”

Fists pounded against the glass, but it was useless. From the other side McGucket stared at him for a moment before smiling. It was a genuine smile, not looking unhinged in the slightest, and somehow that made it all the more terrifying.

“You know what I have learned, fella? That there’s no escape. So stay right here with us and _enjoy_.”

“YOU CAN’T! I am Bill Cipher! The All Seeing Eye! I have seen--”

“A yee-haw for y’all,” McGucket said drily, and pulled down a lever.

Bill tried to scream again, but the cold got there first, stopping his voice as it stopped his movements, throwing him howling back in the Mindscape.

* * *

“Omigod. Omigod. Omigod.”

Fiddleford Hadron McGucket drew in several shaky breaths, trying his hardest to keep himself from shattering, the moment of bravado gone like snow in the sun. Avoiding to look at the frozen face before him, Stanford’s frozen face - _I am never going to unsee this, never_ \- he looked down at the control panel instead. Unlike the cryogenic tube they had used to contain the Shapeshifter, that one hadn’t been tested beforehand; it wasn’t as safe, and that was why he and Stanford had dismissed it as their first option. But needs must when the devil drives, and Fiddleford could only hope it would work.

It did, thank God, it _did._ The parameters were all in order, which meant that Stanford’s body would be preserved correctly for… however long it was needed.

_Please, let it not be long. I don’t know what to do._

Fiddleford dropped the crowbar and walked away with slow steps, back to where Stanley Pines still lay asleep, his breathing regular and eyes peacefully shut. Part of him wanted to grasp him and shake him, demand to know what had happened in Stanford’s mind, what was happening… but there was no telling what he could cause. Maybe he’d take away support from Stanford when he most needed it, and he couldn’t risk it.

So he settled for the next best thing: he sat on the floor, pressed a hand on his eyes, and cried.

* * *

“Hey! Up here!”

“What the… well, damn. Isn’t that…?”

“The Stan O’ War?”

Okay, well. He’d seen plenty of weird stuff in the past week and plenty of even weirder stuff in the past few hours alone, but Stan had to admit that seeing his and Stanford’s childhood boat just _flying_ over their heads was… not the weirdest thing, but definitely in the top five.

“Did you kids steal fairy dust or what?” Stan found himself asking as the flying boat stopped above their heads, causing Stanford to chuckle.

“That is not _really_ how fairy dust works. There are a few misconceptions there,” he said while, above them, Stan’s younger self rolled his eyes.

“Sure, we robbed Tinkerbell on our way back,” he muttered, and threw something down at them - a rope ladder. “Come up on board!”

It was a long climb up there, and Stan still wasn’t _too_ happy with heights, but he supposed that after beating up a demon he shouldn’t really worry about dumb stuff like that. Speaking of which…

“You didn’t happen to run into Mr. Eyeball on the way here, did ya?” he asked, climbing up.

“Nope. But we opened the door! He, uh. Didn’t take it well, did he?”

“Not quite,” Stanford muttered, climbing the rope ladder after Stan. “What _did_ you find there?”

“Well. You’re... gonna have to come up here and see.”

They climbed on board. They saw. And… they still couldn’t make any sense out of it. Or at least, Stan sure couldn’t. Why was there another triangle with Billy now, and a _tilted_ one at that? He opened his mouth to ask, but Stanford got there first: he crouched in front of them and asked a lot more politely than he probably would have.

“Greetings. Who is your friend, Billy?”

The newcomer stared up at him with a wide eye, clearly at a loss for words, but Bill didn’t waste time answering. “This is Liam! Smartest guy in the Second Dimension!” he declared, and glared at all of them as though challenging them to say otherwise. “I mean, I know he doesn’t _look_ smart right now, but he’s just confused - just wait until I explain him everything! He’s the one who left me the books! I remember it all now!”

“I see,” Stanford said slowly, and let his gaze move on the newcomer, who seemed to be trying his best to shrink. “Liam. I assume it’s short for William?”

“Yes,” was the reply. Liam’s voice sounded thin, and full of wonder. “I mean… yes, sir. Are… _are_ you a sir? Billy, who are these people?”

“They’re from the Third Dimension, Brainiac! That’s Stan and Stan and Stan and… Stan,” Bill paused, frowning. “They’re not very creative, really. Like mom and dad calling us both William.”

… Wait. Had he just said--

“Uh, guys? I think we have a problem.”

Young Stanford’s voice caused them all to look up towards him. He was looking below them, hands clutching the rail of the boat, and he was white as chalk; within moments, Stan was by his side and looking down.

For a moment, he saw nothing odd. Well, at least nothing odder than usual: with the fog gone, the Mindscape below them was a mess of colors and shifting shapes, but that was it. He couldn’t see the problem there - until he saw the black holes stretching across it. Until he realized they were _smoldering,_ like thin fabric eaten away by hot embers.

_Oh, hot belgian waffles._

“We gotta go!” he yelled, turning to Stanford. “This place is gonna burn - the bastard is gonna destroy _his own mind_ with us in it! Let’s get this boat back in your mind, right no--”

Before he could finish the sentence, it happened. Blue flames flared up below them, turning everything they touched into ashes. And around them, everywhere, Bill Cipher screamed. “FROM NOW UNTIL THE END OF TIME, FORDSY! I COULD HAVE MADE YOU _A GOD!_ THIS IS ON YOUR HEAD - YOU DIDN’T LET ME GO AND NEITHER WILL I!”

_Goddammit._

“Let’s go!” Stan screamed, tearing himself away from the handrail. “Get this boat moving!”

As both kids ran to do just that - the the _triangle_ kids just stayed  huddled together, clearly at a loss - Stanley turned to look at his brother. He looked calm, unnaturally so.

“How do you know it won’t destroy my mind as well?” he asked. “The Mindscapes have merged. The flames may not stop at the edge of his--”

“I _don’t_ know, okay?” Stan snapped. “I don’t know a thing - you’re the one who knows things! But we gotta try anyway, because if we stay here we’re fucked for sure! And if doesn’t work, then…” he paused, then grinned. His chest hurt at the mere thought, but he forced himself to ignore it. “Then, what the hell, at least we’re gonna _use_ this boat at least once!”

For a moment, Stanford stared at him. Then, finally, he smiled. “Fair enough,” he said, and raised a hand. “... High six?”

_Oh man. Please, don’t cry now. Don’t cry now. Man up, Stan, man up._

“High six,” Stan said, his voice just slightly broken as he returned the gesture, then he smiled. “So. Think this baby can outrun a crazed demon on a rampage?”

His brother smiled back. “Only one way to find out.”

* * *

For the first time, the fire hurt him. It burned, and it was what he wanted. Burn it all to dust, and start anew.

_Another form, another time. A clean slate - just forget._

“STANFORD!”

His form melted away and came back together without control, his will no longer enough to hold it together. His _will_ now was for it all to come apart. For his limbs to burn like twigs, for his body to shatter and his eye to melt away. So that he wouldn’t _know_ anymore.

_It is unseen._

_Invoke my name._

_It hurts!_

His mindscape burned. Memories and knowledge of civilizations long gone went up in flames along with it, the end not long in coming.

_I can help you._

_I need no help._

_Liar._

The roar of flames drowned up all other noises, even his own screams. Bill Cipher, or what was left of him, collapsed into the fire. Of course he’d lied, that was what he _did._ Right there along with the pain and the relief, there was also fear. He wanted it all gone; but, at the edge of the abyss, he knew he didn’t want to _be_ gone.

“A… Aah--” Bill tried to call out, but he couldn’t. With the fire eating away at him, he found he could barely keep his thoughts together. It was too much. He couldn’t _do_ it. _“AAAAAGH!”_

_Invoke my name! Now!_

“A-AH… AXOLOTL!”

_My time has come to burn! I invoke the ancient power that I may--_

The fire suddenly flared higher, crackled harder, and Cipher never got to finish that thought. But it didn’t matter. The name had been invoked; the deed was done.

When Bill Cipher gave a last wordless scream, burning himself out like a Supernova, the Ancient was there to pick up the pieces.


	13. Free

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp, this is almost over. There is another chapter left - an epilogue of sorts - and I’ll do my best to finish it soon, ~~so that I can update next Friday and wrap this up~~.  
>  So this got longer than expected, and it will be another chapter on Wednesday and THEN the epilogue by Saturday. 'Cause I'm on a roll and also I can't sleep.

Bill’s mind burned, and so did Stanford.

He was aware, dimly, of what was happening around him. Of the boat sailing through the air, flames at their heels, hot wind filling its sails and blowing through his hair. He was aware of arms around him, a shoulder against his cheek, Stanley’s voice, telling him to hold on, we’re almost out, stay with me, don’t you dare, _stay with me._

_I’ll be the one to take you down with me!_

“Stanford, please…!”

He tried to reply - tried to speak to Stanley, tried to scream against Bill, but could do neither. His jaw wouldn’t move, his eyes wouldn’t open. He could only tremble in the grasp of that unnatural fever, the heat unbearable, eating at him from the inside out. It burned. _He_ burned.

And, beneath his closed eyelids, he saw _things_ he was not supposed to see - disjointed images there one moment and gone the next, like a tape on fast-forward.

Things belonging to other dimensions. Other timelines. Other realities. Bill’s memories, and his own - flashing before his eyes and then _gone,_ photographs thrown in the fire and forgotten, burned away from his memory.

 _A world burning with blue fire_  
_A closed door leading to an empty room_  
_The pull of the portal dragging him in_  
_The look on Stan’s face one moment before he fell through_  
_A being with seven eyes towering over him_  
_Fighting for his life in a nonsensical world and that pull, taking him back_  
_Stan’s face, much older, smiling at him_  
_Children, there were children, who were they, why would children be there--_  
_Just like me just like I was at his age_  
_A rift no no there shouldn’t be a rift there couldn’t be one_  
_If he gains physical form all is lost ALL IS LOST, oh God, a wound bleeding in the sky_  
_No don’t do this where are they are they safe_  
_Madness this is madness I brought about the end of the world my fault all my fault_  
_No the kids where are the kids LEAVE THEM, LEAVE THEM ALO--_  
_I’ll give you anything! Fame! Money! Riches! Your own galaxy! Please!_ _  
STANLEY_!

“STANFORD!”

Bill’s scream pierced through his mind, like a spear of ice, and for a moment the heat almost died down. For a moment he felt almost cold, and he clung to that one moment of clarity. When Bill screamed again, Stanford could make out words. No - only one word.

“AAAAAGH! A-AH… AXOLOTL!”

 _Praise the Axolotl,_ someone had told him in another reality. Or had they? He didn’t remem--

That thought was cut short by another scream - louder, longer, wordless. And he knew, with utmost certainty, that it was to be the _last._

There was light, blinding, even through his closed eyelids. The flames enveloping Bill Cipher’s mindscape flared brightly one more time, and then… then…

A crack like thunder echoed all around them, painfully loud, and the shockwave came moments afterwards, hitting them with unspeakable force. The boat was thrown across the thin line between mindscapes, crashing on the non-existent ground, only one instant before Bill Cipher’s mind imploded in a bright flash of light. Then, nothingness. For a time.

When Stanford Pines opened his eyes again, he found himself looking at the stars.

* * *

“Hot. Belgian. Waffles.”

“Owww, that hurt.”

“I can’t find my glasses…”

“Wait, I think I’ve seen ‘em…”

With a groan, Stan pushed a piece of what had been the boat’s mast off himself and sat up. He was really, _really_ happy that he wasn’t physically there, or else he’d have felt that for weeks to come. He rubbed his head, glanced around to find Stanford… and stilled, mouth hanging open.

They were in _space._

“What the…?” he muttered, standing up on… on nothing, it seemed. It was like walking on a thin sheet of glass: stars and galaxies were below him, above him, all around him. Pieces of wood were scattered around, some still and some floating in the air. Behind him, young Stanford was putting his glasses back on while young Stanley pushed a few planks of wood off him; Stan was about to call out when a scroll floated past him, and he reached for it out of instinct - only to still when a voice rang out. A wonderfully _familiar_ voice, calm and yet full of something not too far away from wonder.

“My Mindscape is back to normal.”

Stanford was standing only a few feet from him, a hand to his head where the surgery scar had to be, head tilted back and gaze fixed on the stars. Then he turned and stared at Stan in quiet wonder; he looked well again, healthy, and not at all like the wreck Stan had held only minutes - _moments?_ \- earlier, feverish and hot as embers. Under Stan’s stunned gaze, his face opened in a smile.

“He’s gone. He’s really _gone,_ and I’m still here. You… _we_ have won.”

 _Damn right we have won,_ Stan wanted to say. _Don’t you dare give me another scare like that ever again,_ he wanted to add. He wanted to grab him and shake him so hard his stupid teeth would chatter. He wanted to punch him and hold him, and laugh and cry and scream all at once - and maybe he would have done just that if given only one more instant.

But then another voice rose, high and panicked, and the moment was gone.

“Bill? Where are you? Billy? BILL!”

The triangle kid - the _other_ one, the one with tilted and uneven sides Billy had called Liam - was standing among the wreckage of the boat, looking incredibly tiny in all that vastness. His eye was wide, but he didn’t spare a glance to the wonders around them: he just looked at them and, despite the incredibly limited features he had to convey any expression at all, there was no mistaking what kind of look that was. The kid was terrified.

“Have you… have you seen my brother?” he asked, his voice thin as paper.

“I, uh…” Stan began, but fell quiet, at a loss for words. Stanford seemed just as surprised, and then suddenly thoughtful at seeing the kid again; he seemed about to speak, but someone else did first. Young Stanley.

“He’s here! He’s got to be here!” he exclaimed, and ran back to the wreckage. He lifted a plank, then another, throwing them aside and calling out. “Billy! Hey, c’mon! Get outta there! Where are you?”

There was no answer, but the boy didn’t let it stop him - stubborn, he’d always been stubborn as a damn mule - and young Stanford was by his side the next moment, helping him move the wrecked wood.

Maybe he’s _gone_ as well, Stan thought, and he could see that same thought mirrored in Ford’s expression, but then his gaze moved on to Liam, who stood miserably and full of confusion.

_Have you seen my brother?_

To hell with it, he _wasn’t_ gone. If that Liam was still there - a tiny part of Cipher, a memory that belonged to him - then Billy should be, too. Stan took a few steps forward to help, more out of instinct than anything else, and that was when he heard it. They _all_ heard it.

“Oow, my _eye_ …!”

“Billy!”

Liam darted towards the source of the voice right away, almost stumbling forward, just as little Stanford pulled away a broken piece of what used to be the hull. Billy sat up, groaning and rubbing his eye. “Uuugh. Did someone see the license plate of the truck that--”

“BILL!”

“Whoa! Hey! Easy!”

But of course his brother didn’t go easy at all: he clung to him, blabbered, cried, asked a million questions and then if he was _really_ all right, all in the same breath. He hardly seemed to notice when Ford walked up to them, knelt and, calmly, took them both in his hands. Only then Liam turned up to look at him, registered anyone else’s presence.

“It seems some explanations are in order,” Stanford said quietly, then, “I am sorry, Billy. For not telling you everything.”

Still caught in his older brother’s grasp, and clearly not really eager to be freed from it to begin with, Bill frowned for just a moment. “He lied to _you,_ didn’t he?”

“He did,” Ford admitted. “Trusting him was a mistake. Holding _you_ accountable was another.”

Billy seemed to think about it just for a moment before shrugging. “Take us back to the beach,” he said. “I want to show him the sand and the sea and _everything._ Then we’ll be even. Deal?”

Stanford’s lips quirked in a smile. “It’s a deal,” he said, and looked at Liam. “Don’t worry, young man. You and your brother are safe as you can be.”

* * *

“... And that’s the ocean! That’s where the whales live! And that’s the sun and we shouldn’t stare at it, but I do it anyway! This color is called ‘blue’, that one’s yellow and it’s my favorite! And there is a thing called ice cream you’ve got to try! Stanley, get us ice cream!”

To his credit, young Stanley did seem to remember what Ford had told him about never giving Bill anything with even the slightest amount of caffeine, because he paused and turned to glance at him as though to ask for permission. Ford nodded, mouthing ‘strawberry’ - better than chocolate, all in all - and smiled faintly when Stanley made a bucket’s worth of ice cream appear out of thin air. Within moments all four kids were sitting in the sand, eating spoonfuls of it, Billy’s voice still going on and on through mouthfuls to explain Liam everything he could see. Ford’s smile widened for a moment, and then he turned his gaze back down on the notebook.

“You’re such a nerd, you know? What’s the point taking notes in your mind?” Stanley asked. He was sitting next to him on the old swing set, basking in the sun that warmed the beach, making its sand shimmer. It hadn’t been much of a beach in the real world - hence its name - but there, in the mindscape, through the filter of fond childhood memories, it seemed the best possible place on Earth.

“I have been on the receiving end of that accusation a fair amount of times,” he conceded, and finished the last sentence before putting the pen back in his pocket, gaze lingering on his notes. While it was true that upon awakening he would find himself without any actual notes, the act of writing itself helped him memorize a great deal. If he wrote something in his mind, he’d be certain he’d remember it all down to the last word when he woke up.

Not that there had been that much for him to write.

* * *

_Billy’s knowledge is limited, only spacing from his very first memories up to the moment the memory of him, as he is, was created; Bill showed him his world going up in flames, but gave him no hindsight as to why or how he did it._

_This means he could shed no light on Bill’s rise to power; how he acquired his powers in the first place, and the destruction that followed, will remain a tale untold. Perhaps it is for the best. I shudder at the thought of what must have transpired and, for what is perhaps the first time in my life, I do not wish to know._

_What he could give me was a clearer picture of what Bill’s dimension of origin was like. He described a world devoid of color, inhabited by Lines - female - and Shapes - male. A strict class system was in place, one’s lot in life depending on the number of their sides. Women were not considered creatures of much intellect, if any at all, regardless their class. Among males, the Isosceles Triangles were at the very bottom of the social scale; Equilaterals followed, as the merchant class, then Squares, going higher in importance as their sides rose in number. According to Bill, who’s the perfect definition of an Equilateral, he was born from Isosceles parents - a rare occurrence, it seems - and then adopted by Regular parents, Liam’s own. How much of it is true and how much is simple boasting is something I have yet to establish._

_Triangles begeting Squares wasn’t unusual, but not very common either: it usually took at least three generations of Equilaterals and very careful breeding to produce one. Every shape from the Square upwards would gain a side with each generation; when a Polygon had such a high number of sides to be considered circular, then he was a Circle - the highest class, and rulers of the Second Dimension._

_But perhaps what I wrote is untrue. It was not the Isosceles who were at the very bottom, nor the Lines: it was the Irregulars, of which Liam is an example. Bill’s description of Irregulars in their society gave me the impression they were not quite a class: too low to be considered one. They were mishaps: their world praised Regularity, and their mismatched sides made them pariah. My own experiences as a boy due to my extra finger quite simply pale in comparison of their treatment._

_Irregular children were allowed to grow to the age of fifteen, giving them a chance for their Irregularity to fix itself at least to a degree. If it did, then they would pass an inspection and deemed fit to live, if always at the very outskirts of society. If they did not, they would be taken away to be terminated._

_And that is the fate that befell Liam. It is one of the very last things Billy remembers, along with finding books speaking of the Third Dimension - our own dimension - hidden away in Liam’s room after he was taken away. I can only begin to guess the reasons Bill may have had to lock away all memories of Liam._ _~~I wonder what Stanley would have done if I were in Liam’s place. I wonder what I would have~~ _

_As much as I wished to ask Liam about those books, where he found them and what his knowledge of our dimension was, I refrained. He seems an intelligent boy, but he is overwhelmed as things are, unaware of being a memory himself - the real Liam long gone - until only hours ago; perhaps my younger self will be able to get more information out of him in time, in a less traumatic fashion. For time being, I’ll leave him to enjoy what this version of our dimension has to offer._

_One of the things that surprised me is how both of these memories are still here while, I am certain, the mind where they were created is gone - every connection with mine severed. I will need to think about it, but at the moment I can hazard a guess: after I met them, they became_ my _memories as well. This allows them to exist, as their own individuals, within my Mindscape - just like the memories of myself and Stanely do._

_This opens up quite a few exciting possibilities about the nature of memories, and I shall look into it. Not just yet, though._

_First, a vacation._

* * *

“I never said I was sorry.”

Stan’s sudden statement caused Ford to look up from his notes, blinking. Stanley making the seat swing slowly, feet still touching the ground, and kept his eyes fixed on the Stan O’ War - the version of it that was still at the very start of its repairs. “Sorry for what?”

“Your perpetual motion machine. You know I didn’t _mean_ to break it, right?”

He did. Ford could tell now that, deep down, he’d always known. “The fault was mine. I came to the worst possible conclusion without even listening to you, and--”

“Our old man didn’t really give me a chance to speak, anyway,” Stan cut him off with a shrug, and looked down. He shuffled his feet on the sand. “But I had the time to say _something,_ and it was all the wrong stuff. I should have said I was sorry. It was your dream, I took it from you, and then I acted like all was well. Like it didn’t matter at all.”

Ford sighed. “It certainly doesn’t matter at all now, Stanley.”

“I held you back--”

“All you held me back from was throwing myself from the water tower last week.”

The remark caused Stan to turn to look at him, eyes wide. He stared for a few moments, then he let out a long breath. The swing stilled. “Holy Moses. It was _that_ close, wasn’t it?”

There was a knot somewhere in his throat, and keeping his voice firm took Ford a valiant effort. “Yes. But you came for me and then just refused to leave. You took on a demon for me while I didn’t even try to stop dad from throwing you out.”

Stan gave a barking laugh. “Hah! Really now, you make it sound like out old man _ain’t_ the biggest threat out of the two! But I’m totally gonna drop by now, whether he wants it or not.”

His lips curling in a smile against his own will, Ford allowed himself a chuckle before readying himself to tell Stan about their father. There had been no time to speak of it, but now he should at least tell him. “... About our father, there is something you should know,” he said. He stared at the sea, but he could feel his brother’s gaze on him. “He… Well. First of all, the night he threw you out… what he said about you making millions--”

“He never thought I’d be back with any money,” Stan cut him off, his voice sounding far too casual to be genuine. “Let alone with millions. He thought I was gonna come back with my tail between my legs in a few weeks tops.”

“You knew…?”

“I guessed.”

“He would have taken you back in--”

“And never let me hear the end of it,” Stanley cut him off, and shrugged. “So, I had to at least try. And I tried, really, but… yeah. Didn’t work out too well - all I got was a crime record a mile long, while you were busy making deals with three-sided Beelzebub or something.”

“We’re a disaster,” Ford sighed, and Stan laughed.

“Yep, true. But hey, on the bright side, we just destroyed a demon and averted a _much_ bigger disaster. Not bad for a nerd and a dork, all things considered. After this, I think the world can make an effort and deal with us two. Not that bad of a ego boost, really. I had hit rock bottom not too long ago. The place I was in when I got your postcard--” he trailed off, and blinked. “Wait a minute. Ford, how did _you_ know where I was?”

“Your crime record,” Ford said. “Law enforcement across the country is relying more and more on the Internet to exchange information. Fiddleford built something that… allows me to access to some of it, if I want to.”

Stanley blinked. “What, seriously? You can get _that_ kind of info and _didn’t_ use it to get rich off it?” he asked, sounding nothing short of incredulous. This time, it was Ford to laugh: the thought of selling information for cash was as plain on Stan’s face as the glasses on his own.

“Well. I’d say I put it to a better use than that.”

“And what would that be?”

“Finding you.”

There was a moment of silence, then Stan turned away abruptly. “Not fair. That was a low blow,” he mumbled, reaching up to quickly wipe his eyes with a sleeve. “Geez, if dad could see me now…”

Something about that off-hand comment truly hurt, because it reminded Ford that he hadn’t yet gotten to tell him about their father, and it was about time he did. “He… Stanley, our father is not quite the same as--” he began, but it soon became clear that would have to wait: before his eyes, Stan’s form began flickering.

“What the heck…?”

“It seems that your body is about to awaken. You _have_ been in here for a long time.”

“Why aren’t _you_ waking up?”

“I was given a powerful sedative. I will awaken in due time, do not worry,” Ford said, promising himself he and Stanley would talk more about their family - about their father’s condition and what that had meant to all of them - in due time. Perhaps it was for the best he didn’t get to mention it now: the least he could do was letting him enjoy that victory in peace. “I’ll see you on the other side.”

Stanley nodded with a grin. “Aye aye, captain,” he muttered, and stood. As his form flickered again, he brought his hands to his mouth and called out. “HEY! KIDS! Don’t give Ford _too_ much of a headache, promise?”

Of course neither of their younger selves was willing to let him leave without one more high five or six, although young Stanley had to try twice due to the fact his hand became incorporeal for a few moments - and of course it was a noisy goodbye. Nestled in his hair, Billy - once again a bright yellow, not thanks to paint but because of his newfound knowledge he could _will_ himself to be any color he wanted - reached up to shake his finger.

“You’re gonna drop by again, right?” he asked, and Stan grinned down at him.

“You bet - all I need to do is saying some Latin crap anyhow,” he said, and glanced at Liam. Now a greenish cyan rather than gray, he sat on young Stanford’s shoulder; he seemed still unsure of what he should make of his current situation, but far less scared than he’d been at first. “Hey, kiddo. Don’t think we really had the time to talk, with Sixer givin’ you the third degree. Next time, huh? Enjoy the place meanwhile. And make him try toffee peanuts, Little Stan! Don’t let your brother just feed them jelly beans! Toffee peanuts are the best thing since--”

They never got to find out what he had been about to compare it to: he flickered one last time and then he was just gone in a flash of faint blue light. Liam blinked at the spot where he had been standing moments before, bewildered, then turned his eye to Billy.

“... What’s a toffee? What’s a peanut?”

Billy shrugged, still sitting on young Stanley’s head. “Beats me. Hey, Stan! What’s a toffee peanut?”

The boy’s face lit up in delight, and he reached to take Liam from his brother’s shoulder, his grin wide enough to split his face, and walked back towards the boat. “It’s the food of the _gods,_ that’s what! Let me show you…!”

A look between Ford and his younger self was enough to tell that they were both wondering how could anybody enjoy eating that garbage, but they had enough sense not to say anything - or almost. “I’ll fight it with jelly beans,” young Stanford whispered before running after them.

Ford chuckled, then sat on the swing set again and watched them from a distance. He would probably awaken any moment, but until then he may as well relax and enjoy watching his childhood right before him, frozen in time.

* * *

“THE HELL DOES IT MEAN, YOU _HAD_ TO FREEZE HIM?”

“Weren’t you listening? That _thing_ took hold of his body, and I had to contain--”

“Well, now the _thing_ is gone! So GET MY BROTHER OUTTA THERE, or so help me-- whoa!” Stan trailed off with a yelp when McGucket suddenly ducked to grab something and then that something - a freakin’ _iron bar_ \- suddenly hit the wall just beside his head. Stan took a few steps aside, startled, and McGucket pointed the bar at him like a sword.

“Look, fella. I’ve had a bad day,” he said, his voice dangerously even, and Stan realized just then how reddened his eyes were. He paused and swallowed. All right, maybe he shouldn’t have just snapped and started screaming, but what the hell. He’d left his brother looking healthy and happy, and awoke to find him frozen in some tube, features twisted in the horrified expression of a caged animal desperate to claw its way out. Of course he knew it hadn’t been _Stanford_ to make that face, but still…!

“Huh. Yeah, I can see that now that you mention--”

“A _very_ bad day. I’m going to get Ford outta there with or without you yelling at me. But if you _do_ yell again, then you said it yourself - _so help you._ ”

Stan threw up his hands. “Right! Okay! Sorry,” he said quickly. “I… just got worried. Sorry. Gonna pay for a drink later, what do you think?” he added, fully knowing he had no money and that therefore he’d have to use Stanford’s to begin with. “I mean, Cipher is gone for good. Gotta go celebrate, right?”

With a long sigh, McGucket lowered the iron bar and then let it fall on the floor with a clatter. His shoulders slumped for a moment, but when he straightened himself it was as though a terrible weight had been lifted from them. He met Stan’s gaze and even gave something remarkably similar to a smile. “... Yes. A drink would be nice. It… it’s _over,_ isn’t it?”

Stan smiled back. “Yes. It’s over,” he said, and kicked the iron bar away. It rolled across the floor with more clattering and ended up in some dark corner. “Now let’s thaw Poindexter and go celebrate.”

* * *

“Boys, you look terrible. What has _happened_ to you?”

For a few moments, none of them said anything to answer Susan’s question: they just exchanged a silent look. Out of the three of them, only Stan was in a reasonably good shape, if rather scruffy-looking. Stanford was on the mend, but he was still paler and skinnier than he had any right to be, his growing hair barely hiding the surgery scar on his head. McGucket had his wrist in a cast, dark shadows under still reddened eyes. In the end, it was him to speak.

“... Car accident?”

“Car accident,” Ford echoed.

“Totally a car accident,” Stan confirmed, and turned back to Susan with a grin. “You see, Mr. Mysterious Science Guy in the Woods totally forgot that _triangular_ road signs stand for _danger,_ and got us in a ditch. The car caught fire and all but hey, good thing I was there to pull them both out! All by myself,” he added, leaning on the counter and entirely missing the unimpressed look his brother and McGucket exchanged. All he paid attention to was Susan’s obvious _swooning,_ which he hoped would be followed by free food to go with their drinks.

It was.

“Did I just watch you seduce the Greasy’s waitress to get free food?”

“Yep. You’re welcome,” Stan said through a mouthful of meatloaf. They didn’t bother keeping their voices too low: Susan was in the back, and the only person in the Diner aside from them was a red-headed teen - Boyish Dan, Stanford had called him - struggling to get the jukebox at the far end of the room working.

“You _do_ realize I could have paid for it, right?”

“Hey, free food is the best food. Free _everything_ is the best,” Stan pointed out, then grabbed his drink. “So. Ding-Dong! The witch is dead. Burned to a crisp. Wanna toast to that? Hah, get it? ‘Cause he’s toast!”

McGucket gave what was probably the only genuine laugh Stan had heard from him until that moment, and raised the glass as well. “You bet,” he said, then glanced at Stanford. “He’s really _gone,_ isn’t he? Gone for good?”

For the briefest of moments, Stanford’s gaze met Stan’s own. It was barely a glance, but more than enough for him to guess precisely what - or rather who - his brother was thinking off: a tiny shred of Bill who still existed within his mind, the memory of what he’d been at some point a long time ago. But that was what he was: a memory. Bill Cipher himself was gone, burned away from existence. So, in the end, Stanford replied with no hint of hesitation.

“Yes. He is gone,” he said, and raised his glass as well.

At the far end of the room, the red-headed teen finally succeeded in getting the jukebox to work - but, taken as they were with their toast, none of them paid any attention to the music.

 _We’ll meet again_  
_Don’t know where, don’t know when_  
_But I know we’ll meet again_ _  
Some sunny day…_

* * *

“So… It is a goodbye, then.”

Stanford’s voice was quiet and, despite his best efforts, he couldn’t keep sadness entirely out of it. He remembered how happy he’d been when Fiddleford had joined him there - he hadn’t know how lonely he had truly felt, despite Bill’s presence, until then - and seeing him go left a sour taste in his mouth. He knew it wouldn’t the happiest of homecomings, with divorce papers awaiting him in California, and he couldn’t shake off the thought it had been his fault.

_If only I hadn’t involved him, if only I listened to him, if only I trusted him, if only--_

“I’d prefer to call it ‘until next time’,” Fiddleford said, interrupting his thoughts. He had his coat draped over his shoulders, a suitcase in his good hand and another at his feet. He was so eager to return home and see his son again that he had no intention to wait until his wrist had healed enough for him to drive to return home - hence why they were all standing at the only bus stop in town, waiting for Fiddleford’s ride to come. “Don’t look at me like that, buddy. I’ll be fine. She said she wants things to stay civil and all we both want is for Tate to be happy, so it’s gonna work out. Somehow. At least I’m going to _be_ there, and that’s something, right?”

All too aware of Stanley’s steady presence behind him, Ford smiled. “Yes. It’s what matters the most,” he said, and held out his hand. He expected Fiddleford to take it, but instead he suddenly ducked down to put one of his suitcases down and open it.

“Before I forget…” he mumbled, reaching into it, and pulled out something - a thesis paper of all things - and put it in Ford’s outstretched hand. He took a look at the front page, and his heart seemed to skip a beat.

_The Astonishing Anomalies of Gravity Falls, by Stanford Pines, PhD._

It was the paper Fiddleford had written for him in secret, categorizing his discoveries for him  to publish, and all to try getting his mind off the portal, away from his obsession. The paper he had written and offered to him without asking for anything in return, not even credit.

_There are enough discoveries here to make you a multimillionaire. Forget about the portal and the Grand Unified Theory of Weirdness! Publish this, get your life back, and move on!_

But he had done none of those things. As a thank you for so much work, for so much selflessness, all that Ford had done was mistrusting him - believing Bill’s words over his friend’s only because that monster said what he wanted, and not what he needed, to hear. He had thought he had wanted to stop him from changing history, to take the merit for himself, while all he had wanted to do all along was to help him. He hadn’t let him, and still he had kept trying; he had been there for a test he was terrified about, standing by his side, and nearly paid for Ford’s own folly with his sanity.

“Fiddleford--”

“I still think you should publish it, you know,” Fiddleford was saying. “It’s huge, Stanford, and it can make you rich.”

_After all that happened, he truly would let me publish this with my name alone on it?_

“Hey, what’s that?” Stanley was asking behind him. “What’s this about getting rich?”

“It may need a bit of proofreading and a few tweaks - I was rather tired when I worked on it - but other than that--” Fiddleford trailed off with a surprised noise when Ford reached out suddenly to pull him close in a tight hug.

Perhaps too tight, as he had forgotten, for a moment, of his broken wrist. _“Yowch!”_

“Sorry! Sorry!” Stanford said quickly, letting him go and choosing to ignore Stan’s mumbled suggestion to ‘get a room’. “Fiddleford, this is… I have done nothing to deserve--”

A honking noise caused him to trail off as the bus to California pulled to a stop beside them, the door opening. As the driver got off the bus to pick up Fiddleford’s suitcases, clearly having spotted the cast on his arm, Stanford’s old friend smiled. “Think nothing of it, buddy.”

“If I _do_ publish this, your name will be on it right alongside mine,” Stanford said. “Actually, your name should be there first.”

“Nah, don’t do it,” Stan said, crossing his arms. “His ex would take half his slice of cake. Just give him part of the money in cash after meeting in a shady motel, so that no one knows, or… what? What’s so funny?” he protested when both Ford and Fiddleford laughed.

His chuckle dying down, Fiddleford held out his good hand. “Can we do this without breaking my other wrist?” he asked, causing Stan to roll his eyes.

“Look, your started it, okay?” he said, but he was grinning when he reached out to shake his hand. “You know, you’re not half bad for a nerd. Have a nice trip back. So, you’re leaving your car here for good, or…?”

“I’ll return to pick it up when I’m fit to drive,” Fiddleford replied. “I’d appreciate finding it again.”

“Of course.”

“With the engine still in place and all of the tires on.

“Who do you take me fo--”

“And with gas in it. I _know_ there is some left.”

“Fine, fine!” Stanley muttered, rolling his eyes. “Sheesh! How about a little trust here?”

_Trust no one._

Fiddleford laughed. “I guess I can try. I assume you’re not off to… wherever you were before, right?”

“Nope,” Stanley smirked, reaching to put a hand on Ford’s shoulder. “I ain’t going nowhere.”

There had been a time when that statement would have made Stanford feel like he was suffocating, and then guilty for feeling that way. But now, standing in the sun as his best friend climbed on his bus home and with his brother’s hand on his shoulder, his mind once again entirely his own, he felt neither. He only felt _free._

“So,” Stanley finally spoke up once the bus disappeared from sight. “When are we going home? Can’t wait to see Ma again, but maybe it would be best to wait until you’ve got more hair back and look a bit less like a scarecrow, huh? Just to avoid givin’ her the scare of her life. No worries, I’m sure I can get more than enough pies out of Swooning Susan to put some meat on those bones, and… is something wrong?”

Inwardly cursing himself for the frown he had allowed to show on his face, Ford shook his head. “No, no. It’s all right. It’s just… well…” he struggled to find words, and the next moment Stan was looking at him closely, clearly worried.

“Is it about the stuff you saw? From other realities? ‘Cause look, I can tell you that this is real, that you’re safe and all. Want me to take my shirt off again? ‘Cause I’ll do that in a sec if--”

“No, not at all!” Ford said quickly. “It’s not that. Whatever glimpses I got of other realities, they’re gone now. And I hardly remember anything of what I saw,” he added. That was true: he remember bits and pieces if he tried - _kids, in one reality there were kids and I didn’t want Bill to hurt them_ \- but he had little doubt they would fade soon. Even now, the more he tried to cling to details, the more they seemed to elude him, like water running through his fingers. It was a relief, for the most part, but there was a part of him that almost mourned for that loss, for the wealth of knowledge now gone, for the worlds he would never get to see for real.

_The portal is still there, and now that Bill is gone… with the proper modifications..._

Ford forced himself to ignore the thought, holding the thesis paper against his chest instead, and decided it would be best to change subject - just one moment before Stanley took it upon himself to do just that.

“Oh, good. Sorry, can’t help but worry. Must be a big brother thing.”

Oh, for heaven’s--!

“Stanley, you are not the big brother. We’re _twins_ to begin with, and I either way I was the first to be bor--”

“Yeah, by ten minutes. Shame that you were frozen solid for a couple of hours. Can you age while frozen? Nope, didn’t think so! Which makes me about a hour and fifty minutes older now!”

“That’s not relevant--”

“Suck it up! Alpha twin! Alpha twin!” Stanley chanted, improvising a little dance. “Man, I wish I could tell the old man about all this! But it would mean having to explain a lot of crap we better keep secret, huh?”

The mention of their father caused all amusement - and a small measure of childish annoyance; truth was that Stanley had a point, technically, and Ford had enjoyed being the older twin - to fade suddenly, replaced by something that weighed like a rock in his chest. It was about time he and Stanley spoke of their family. It couldn’t be delayed any further.

“When we return home,” he finally forced himself to say, “you’ll find our father is not quite the same anymore.”

Stanley’s smug expression immediately turned to confusion, then into alarm. “What do you mean? Did he shave his mustache? Take off his shades and get blinded by the sun?” he asked, his smile not at all believable. Ford couldn’t bring himself to smile at the half-hearted joke, either, so he just kept talking.

“He began showing signs of dementia four years ago. Nothing too noticeable at first, but he’s been steadily getting worse ever since,” Ford said, trying to keep his voice gentle, and Stanley reared back as though struck.

“What-- you’re kidding, right? I mean, he ain’t that old! He’s like, what, sixty-five?”

“It’s early onset dementia. It does happen, and… it happened to him.”

For a few moments, Stanley said nothing. The he dug his hands into his coat’s pockets, lowered his gaze and set his jaw. He seemed lost in thought for a few more instants, then,  “Does he remember kickin’ me out?”

“I… honestly don’t know.”

“Does he remember me at all?” his brother pressed on. His tone was casual, but his body language was that of someone bracing for a blow, and Ford was immensely relieved he wouldn’t have to deal it.

“Yes,” Ford said quickly, and held up his hands when Stanley shot him a look at was in equal parts hopeful and doubtful. “Honest! He remembers you for sure. He did last time - he asked where you were, a few times. No, several times. There was one time, I… I pretended to be you, to make him stop,” Stanford admitted, looking away. Switching places was something they had done often as children, always worth a laugh, but when he’d done it for their father he hadn’t felt like laughing at all. It had been horrible, almost as hard as watching their mother make plans, against all hope, of what they would do together as a family when Stan came back. At least now _that_ dream was about to come true.

More silence, then, finally, Stanley turned to leave. “I don’t know where I was when he asked,” he finally said, his voice low. “But I know where I’m _gonna_ be in two weeks’ time.”

He said nothing more, but of course Ford didn’t need him to specify. They both knew where they were going next.

Home.


	14. Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, the "epilogue" got longer than expected, and I ended up splitting it in one proper chapter and a short epilogue. But hey, time to wrap this up, so here’s the chapter. I'll post the last part on Saturday at the latest.

For the rest of his life, Stanley Pines would repeat himself the same mantra whenever faced with an arduous task: ‘I punched a demon of chaos in the eye. I can do this’. It was a good mantra, really, and it usually worked. 

The day he stood before the door of his childhood home for the first time in over ten years, the window of what had been his and Stanford’s bedroom looming above him like an empty eye, it wasn’t working at all. Everything looked the same - not the stuff in the front window, which had probably been long since sold and replaced by different things, but the house itself was just as he remembered, down to the doormat and the mezuzah by the doorframe.

“I’m not sure I can do this,” he found himself saying, and would have stepped back if not for Stanford’s hand on his upper back. Because he was right  _ there _ by his side, and not up there at the window to turn away and close the curtains on his last plea.

“Of course you can. I wrote them - they know you’re coming,” Stanford said. In the weeks that had passed since Bill’s demise, he had changed so much he hardly looked like the walking skeleton Stan had seen when he’d first knocked at the door of his house in the woods. His hair had grown back a bit more to hide the surgery scar entirely, and he was well on his way back to a healthy weight. He was still a bit pale, but the dark shadows under his eyes were gone, despite the occasional nightmares they both had to deal with. 

Stan’s own involved the water tower, and his brother, eyes gleaming yellow, throwing himself off it as he stood on top of it, unable to move or do anything to stop him, unable to even scream. He would inevitably awaken with a start the instant before Stanford’s body hit the ground, and truth be told it was a blessing, like he was being spared the worst of it. 

As for Stanford’s… who knew. He never remembered them, or so he said, and Stan had never wanted to press on: if he did remember them, it was clear he didn’t want to talk about them. Either way, the bad nights had become fewer, more and more peaceful nights between one nightmare and the next. One day, hopefully, they would fade.

_ We can handle this. We can handle anything.  _

Stan drew in a deep breath, and rang the doorbell.

The echo hadn’t faded yet when there were steps, quick and steady; dad’s steps, just the way he remembered them. Stan had a few seconds to panic and consider a quick retreat before the door swung open. 

The man standing before him stood a couple of inches taller than him, a similar built, strong jaw and features that looked like they had been set in stone. And it wasn’t Filbrick Pines.

“... Shermie?”

Sherman Pines squinted, but other than that his face showed hardly any change. He had their father’s dark green eyes, the only one out of the three of them to inherit them; fitting, considering that he had always been the one to resemble him the most. Ten years their senior, serious and steady as a rock, he’d been a real bore. As kids, before he moved out to be on his own, the twins had tried all they could to get him to crack a smile, and the few times they had succeeded it had felt like they had scored a major victory.

“He’s just allergic to fun,” Stan had said once, before their mother had revealed him Shermie’s secret: he joked his own way, with a perfectly straight face, so that everyone else would be left wondering whether he was serious or not. To him, watching others squirm was the real fun. Which made him kind of an ass, but not a totally humorless one. 

And, as he spoke now, he did sound perfectly serious. “Hello, Stanf-- oh, wait. It’s the  _ other _ one. What’s the name again? Sheldon?”

_ Yeah, sure. Like this is gonna work on me now. _

Stanley suppressed a scoff and let his face fall into an identical mask of indifference. “You got it wrong as usual. It’s Steve, remember?”

“Sorry, Scott,” Shermie replied without missing a beat, and turned to glance over his shoulder, inside the house. “Simon, go tell your grandma that Sean and Stuart are here.”

There was a childish laugh, and a shrill voice. “Daa-aad, my name is Samuel!”

“Don’t talk back to me, Spencer.”

Another laugh, the sound of feet pounding up the stairs - holy Moses, was the one talking really Sam? He had been just a  _ baby _ when Stan had last seen him - and Shermie turned back to them, expression still unreadable. 

“And I assume that, after leaving  _ me _ to deal with the old man and his shop for ten years, you want to be let in. With  _ that  _ hair, no less.”

Stan rolled his eyes. “Gee, thanks. Aren’t you happy to see me?”

Shermie stared back at him, face stony. “I am beside myself with joy,” he said, deadpanned. “You still haven’t given me a reason to let you in.”

Stan grinned, sizing him up. He’d always been bigger than him, but now that he was an adult himself he was pretty confused in his chances. And, besides, he had punched a  _ demon _ just two weeks earlier. “You know I could punch my way in, right?”

That did get him to crack something remarkably similar to a smile. “You? Hah! Hardly.”

“Wanna bet?”

Shermie shrugged. “I could take on your offer and grind you to dust, but then I’d have to clean up. And our mother may or may not lodge a complaint. So I’ll be generous and let you in behind proper payment,” he added, and glanced at Stanford. “Three?”

Stanford chuckled, and nodded. “Seems fair enough,” he said, causing Stan to frown. 

“Three? Two wha-- ow! HEY!”

“Ribs,” he heard Stanford saying behind him when Shermie caught him in a bear hug strong enough to make at least a couple of his ribs creak. Or maybe three, hard to tell. 

“Okay, okay! Enough! I paid my due!” Stan wheezed, and felt more than he heard Shermie’s scoff before he let him go. Okay, so maybe he had been wrong thinking he would be able to punch his way through him. 

“You thick-headed animal,” Shermie muttered. “Why the  _ hell _ haven’t you come back sooner?”

“You know why. The old man--”

“To hell with the old man. You could have come to my place.”

Stan grinned, hoping that would be enough to hide the way his heart clenched at the realization he really meant it. “Aww, you  _ do _ care,” he said instead, to an expressionless face.

“I can neither confirm nor deny--”

“... Stanley?”

_ Oh. Oh, God. _

His mother has spoken softly, but her voice may as well have been loud as a gunshot. The moment the name was out of her mouth, Stan winced and Shermie immediately stepped away from the doorway like a trained soldier - leaving him to face his mother for the first time in over ten years, at least in the real world.

She had grown older and a bit thinner. There were gray wisps in her hair, signs of aging at the corners of her eyes and mouth, some wrinkles starting to show on her neck - and yet the look of wonder on her face made her look her younger than ever. Plus, she still absolutely  _ rocked _ that red dress.

All of a sudden, every single one of the small speeches Stan had prepared in his mind during the long trip to New Jersey - made even longer by the necessity to avoid at least most of the states he was banned from, or wanted in - vanished from his mind like smoke.

“Hey, ma,” Stan found himself saying, his mouth dry. “You look great.”

Maureen Pines opened her mouth. Then closed it. Then reached cover it with her hands, and let out a noise that was somewhere between a choke and a laugh. “Flatterer,” she managed, but Stan hardly even heard her: even as she spoke her eyes had filled with tears, and he couldn’t stand watching that. He just couldn’t. 

So he closed up the space between them in two strides, and hugged her tight. Just like in Ford’s mind she seemed so _ tiny, _ even in heels. 

_ My little free spirit, _ her memory had said. _ Not so little anymore. _

“I missed you, Ma,” he choked out. When had he started crying? Dammit, he didn’t  _ mean  _ to cry. 

“Oh, Stanley. I missed you too,  _ so  _ much. Please, forgive me.”

“... Huh? Forgive you for wha--” Stan began, only to trail off when she suddenly pulled back and slapped him across the face, hard enough to make his head whip aside. Through the smack ringing in his ears, he faintly heard the sympathetic hisses coming from his brothers. Somewhere on his left, a childish voice - Sam? - muttered something that sounded a lot like ‘ouch’.

Ah well. Not the first woman to do it, anyway. Marylin’s slap in Vegas when he’d found her trying to steal his car, with the cheap ring still at her finger, had been a lot worse. What his mother said, however, stung a lot more than anything she could have  _ done.  _

“Over ten years! Not even a phone call!  _ Not one,  _ Stanley!”

_ But I called you, ma. Used my one phone call from jail once. I was just too ashamed to speak. _

“Mom…” Stanford began speaking, but Stan wouldn’t have him speak on his behalf now. So he straightened himself, faced his mother and gave his most sheepish smile.

“... Sorry it took me so long, ma. I got you flowers,” he added, only to realize a moment later that he had forgotten them in the car. But it didn’t really matter, because of course his mother wouldn’t have cared if he’d showed up on a white steed, with all the roses in the world and all of the cash money ever printed. He could have showed up in rags for all she cared, and it would have been enough.  _ He _ was enough.

“Flowers,” she repeated, and laughed. Her laugh hadn’t changed, either: it still had the same girlish quality to it. “Gone  _ ten years, _ and you got me flowers.”

“Yep. I think they’re in the car, though. Maybe I should go get ‘em? They probably need water and--”

“Stanley Pines,” she cut him off, holding out her arms. “You are going absolutely  _ nowhere _ for the next two weeks.  _ Neither _ of you is,” she added, and smiled again through tears, holding out her arms and glancing at Stanford. “Come here, both of you.”

She didn’t need to say it twice. It had been a snug fit in her arms when they were both children; now that they were both grown men and easily taller than her it felt pretty crowded, but still just as good. No, even better: Stan had never needed a hug more, and he was rather sure the same went for Stanford. It felt as though nothing and no one could ruin that moment.

“I almost thought you were dead,” Maureen Pines choked out, holding them both. Stan opened his mouth to speak, but someone else got there - Shermie.

“She’s being overdramatic. Of course she used her amazing psychic powers to know you were fine.”

Stan snorted, glaring at him over his mother’s shoulder. “You’re still an ass.”

“Stanley! Not in front of Samuel!” she protested, finally pulling back. “I taught you better!”

“Yeah, watch your language in front of my fucking kid.”

_ “Sherman Pines!” _

Stanford rolled his eyes with a sigh and Shermie showed no reaction at all, but Stan couldn’t hold back a snicker - and neither could Sammy, standing right next to his father. He was a cute kid, with brown hair and the same green eyes as his dad, and he was on the small side for his age. Still, having last seen him as a wailing infant the night he’d been thrown out, Stan couldn’t help but marvel at how much he’d grown. 

“Hey, kiddo,” he said, crouching in front of him. “You don’t remember me, but I’m your Uncle Stan - I babysat you plenty of times. Nice to meetcha,” he said, and held out his hand. The kid smiled, and immediately reached out to shake it.

“Is it true that you wore Groucho Marx glasses at your Bar Mitzvah?”

Stan laughed. There was an odd relief in realizing that he wasn’t a complete stranger to that kid, that he hadn’t been entirely written off the family history. “You bet! Your grandpa was not impressed, but then again he never is, huh? Hey, aren’t you about eleven now?”

“And a half! My Bar Mitzvah is next year! Will you and Uncle Ford come?”

Stan smiled. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world, kiddo,” he said, and he meant it, he really did. “You know, I think those Groucho Marx glasses might still be around here somewhere. If you find ‘em, they’re yours.”

“Cool!”

Shermie raised an eyebrow. “Samuel, I forbid you to wear anything like it in the temple.”

Sam pouted up at him. “You forbid me to do stuff all the time.”

“It’s my job. Yours is not to listen.”

“But then what’s the point?”

“So that I’ve done my duty as a parent and am therefore free to complain about kids these da--”

“Maureen? Who is it?”

The voice cut off Stan’s laughter just as it cut off his brother’s sentence, causing a sense of dread to spread in his chest. 

_ No. Nope. Not ready. No siree, not at all. _

The thought of turning and bolting out of the door did cross Stan’s mind, but he didn’t - if anything because he suddenly found himself unable to move. He just stood there, glued on the spot, when Filbrick Pines appeared in the doorway - or at least, someone who looked a lot like him did.

The man he remembered stood straight as an iron rod, his jaw always set, his suit impeccable, a hat always on his head and with shades to cover his eyes. What he found himself facing was an old man shorter than himself, back curved and leaning heavily on a cane, thinning hair and mustache gone from light brown to iron gray. The hat was gone and so was the suit, replaced by an old man’s a housecoat; without the shades, his eyes looked larger than they had any right to be. His gaze, no longer hidden, seemed horribly vacant, in a way it had never been before.

Stanford had warned him to expect as much, of course, and Stan had thought he’d been ready, but he could tell now that he wasn’t. How could he be? He had left behind the unyielding head of the family, and had returned to a lost old man.

“Dad,” he found himself calling out, his mouth dry, and that vacant gaze paused on him. Filbrick Pines narrowed his eyes, in a way that made clear the gears in his brain were turning, if slowly. His gaze, now not so vacant anymore, shifted between him and Stanford for a few long moments, then - finally - he spoke.

“... Stanley,” he said, then paused again. “You…” he added, and frowned. Now  _ that  _ made him look a lot more familiar, Stan thought, and opened his mouth to speak, to defend himself from whatever accusation he was about to throw at him. If he dared bring up that damn money…!

“Listen, I--”

“You’re late for lunch.”

“... Know that last time we met you said I wouldn’t be-- huh?”

Filbrick Pines nodded, as though he had heard nothing of what Stan had just said. “You are late for lunch. Isn’t he? Maureen?”

That vacant look, again. Stan heard his mother stifling a sigh before walking up to him and reaching to take his arm. “No, dear. It’s not even midday yet.”

“Oh.”

“You should sit. Sammy is going to help you to the armchair, all ri--”

“Not him. Stanley. Where’s Stanley?”

Sometimes Stan had imagined returning home without the money, of course. He’d imagined his father’s coldness, the kind that told him loud and clear with no need for words that he was a failure. He had imagined that would hurt. This was worse, because at least he could have tried to hate his old man if he still had his wits about him; now he reached for his anger and found nothing but a handful of ashes and long dead embers.

His mother turned to look at him, a mute plea in her gaze. “Stanley, dear, would you be so kind…?”

Acutely aware of everyone’s gaze on him - and the touch of Stanford’s hand on his shoulder, just for a moment - Stan forced himself to give his most convincing smile. He’d had to fake plenty in the past ten years, after all. This one was the hardest to keep up.

“Sure, ma.”

Filbrick’s favorite armchair was still exactly where it had always been, but it showed the signs of having been used a great deal more. Stan helped his father sit and stood there for a few moments, not quite knowing what to do or say. In the end, his gaze fell on the cane. 

“... Hey, is that the whalebone walking stick that guy from Wisconsin tried to trade in exchange for a set of ceramic dishes with weird faces painted on them?” he asked, more to say something than because he really expected his father to remember anything. He didn’t, in fact. How would an old man with dementia remember something that had happened at least fifteen years befo--

“No. That was the mother of pearl carriage clock.”

“... Huh?”

Unaware of his stunned expression, Filbrick Pines nodded. He was looking at the wall behind him, his eyes not really focusing on anything, but his voice was suddenly louder and surer than minutes before. “Yes. Mother of pearl, worth about a thousands bucks if working. Except that it did not work, because… because…”

“His kid had smashed it,” Stan finished for him, trying to ignore a sudden sense of unreality. The memory came back to him in bits and pieces, a cloudy afternoon when Stanford was still buried in his book and he’d gone downstairs to watch his father handling business. “That was why he tried to trade it for something else. He had tried to fix it with, like, tape…”

“Superglue.”

“Yes, you’re right! It was super glue and… how did you realize that again?”

“He had small burns on his fingertips. The kind the glue he tried to use leaves on skin.” Under Stan’s incredulous gaze, Filbrick Pines slowly nodded. “Yes, superglue. The clock was well worth the cane even broken, but the way he tried to lie - he said it would work again once charged, and we both knew it wouldn’t. I was--”

“Not impressed,” Stan finished for him, and caused him to blink.

“How did you guess?”

Stan ignored the question and just laughed, suddenly elated. He felt like he’d just found out an old broken clock could be made to work again, after all, if you just knew what  _ made _ it work.

_ So we just gotta talk business? Very well. Let’s talk business. _

* * *

There was a lot of talking during lunch because, after all, there was a lot to talk about - even taking in account the many things Stan and Ford could  _ not  _ tell them. Ford was glad to talk little of his research and let his brother do most of the talking, covering a great deal of his ten years away from home.

Stanley’s account wasn’t entirely honest, of course. There was no mention of prison, for one, and hardly anything about the activities that had gotten him in trouble more than once; whenever his enterprises had failed, he chalked it up to bad luck, and said nothing about having to live in his car for long stretches of time. But there were still stories to tell and, Ford had to admit, some were rather amusing - like his forty-eight hour long marriage in Vegas to a woman who, as it turned out, was only aiming to scam him out of his car.

To be entirely honest, Ford couldn’t help but think that Stan and this Marilyn actually sounded like a good match. Beside him, his mother was leaning forward, paying hardly any attention to the food, as though she couldn’t get enough of the sound of Stanley’s voice. At the moment she seemed torn between amusement and indignation at the thought anyone would try to scam her baby.

“... So she got away with the ring but hey, it was gum-machine stuff I got with a quarter. Imagine her face when she tried to sell it!” Stan was saying, causing their mother to laugh so hard she had tears streaming down her face. Stanley laughed as well, giving her a few pats on the back, then turned to glance at Ford and winked. 

_ Watch this, _ he mouthed, and turned to their father - who was barely lifting his eyes from the dish in front of him, having ignored Sam’s attempts at getting him to play some kind of guessing game. “Hey, dad. Remember that chick who walked in here with a ring that turned out to be just a piece of painted tin and glass?” Stanley called out.

Filbrick Pines looked up, blinked, and frowned. “You’ll have to be more specific. Do you have any idea how many divorcees walked in with rings worth nothing?”

Stanley had used that trick a few times throughout lunch, and it had worked every single time: for a few minutes, they would get a glimpse of their father as he used to be. As long as he was talking business, he sounded incredibly normal - even recalling details from trades and sales he had made a couple of decades earlier.

“Yeah, good point,” Stanely conceded. “Say, remember that old nightstand we bought? The one with the creepy porcelain doll inside? Blue dress, one eye missing? I found it in another drawer and put it in Shermie’s cereal, remember? Made him shriek.”

“You shrieked?” Sam asked, looking up at his father with a grin and causing him to scowl.

“Thanks again for that, Stanley,” he grumbled, but everyone’s attention stayed fixed on Filbrick as he spoke again. 

“Yes. Had it fixed up and sold it for… about two hundred bucks, I think.”

“Ma had a bad feeling about it, didn’t she?”

This time, Filbrick Pines rolled his eyes and glanced sideways at his wife. “Could very well be. Your mother always had a bad feeling about everything antique I ever bought or sold.”

Taken as she was by the scene, Maureen Pines forgot to even protest, and Ford felt a sudden impulse to turn and hold her tight. She had lost one of her sons ten years earlier, then Ford had across the country and her husband had begun slipping away as well; he couldn’t imagine what it had to feel like, having them all back at the same table like a family.

_ I should have come more often. I shouldn’t have assume that Shermie and Sam living in the same town would be enough to keep her company. _

While watching her, Ford failed to realize that his father’s gaze had lost a the vacant quality it usually had - and not only when Stan was speaking to him about business. By the end of the lunch, which took the best part of the afternoon, there was nothing in his demeanor that gave any hint about his condition. Had he noticed, he’d have recognized it as one of the lucid moments he used to have until the previous year, the kind that could last for hours. It had been a while since last time he’d had one.

Instead, he only realized what was going on when the last of the dessert was gone, and Filbrick Pines stood. “I am going out.”

His wife, in the middle of telling her sons about the latest story involving her nosy neighbour - who, to be fair, was no nosier than Mrs. Pines herself - trailed off to blink at him. “Are you sure, dear? This is usually when you sleep for a couple of--”

“No. I’d rather go out.”

Shermie looked at him with a raised eyebrow. “Not in your housecoat, you’re not.”

“You don’t say,” his father said drily, reaching for his cane. “Do I look that far gone?”

“Honestly?” Sharmie challenged, causing Filbrick to snort.

“I’ll change and be out of the front door in ten minutes. Stanley, you’re coming with me.”

And with that he was gone, leaving his family to stare speechlessly at the doorway.

* * *

It wasn’t a long walk to the beach, and that was a blessing: not only because his father had to lean so heavily on the cane that from time to time Stan found himself reaching out to steady him - something he stubbornly refused to let him do - but also because it was awkwardly silent. By the time they reached the seafront, Filbrick Pines hadn’t said a word. He stayed silent for another full minute after they sat on an old wooden bench, half-rotted by years of wind and salt.

The old swing set was gone, Stan noticed, and there was a pang of something in his chest that he couldn’t quite name. Not that he had time to dwell on it for long.

“I kicked you out,” Filbrick finally spoke, his voice even, and Stan winced. He really hadn’t expected him to bring it up; until then, it had looked like he didn’t remember  _ that  _ part.

“Well… I guess--”

“That was not a question,” he cut him off. He kept staring at the sea, the setting sun reflecting on the shades that were now back on his face. His hands were folded on the handle of the cane. “How long ago was that?”

“... A little over ten years.”

“Hmm,” he mumbled, and for a few moments it seemed that would be all he had to say on the matter. It was not. “I had thought you’d be back in a few weeks, once you learned a lesson.”

“Yeah, Stanford told me. Look, about… about all the millions I costed us--” Stan began, but his father lifted a hand to shut him up, and he fell silent. 

“Millions that would have done absolutely nothing to keep my brain from rotting.”

“Hey now, it’s not so bad-- ouch!” he yelped then Filbrick Pines used his cane to whack him on his arm. “What was  _ that _ about?”

“Don’t patronize me, Stanley.  I only ever speak one way, don’t I?”

“Very frankly,” Stan found himself saying, his voice like old paper, and his father nodded, hands folded on top of the cane. Its planted itself in the sand once again.

“Exactly. You take more after your mother on this aspect, so if you can’t speak frankly even now, don’t speak at all and let me do the talking. My brain is rotting, whatever fancy medical term you want to use to say it, and I don’t have many lucid moments like this. No telling when it might happened again or how long it will last, and I have a lot to cram into it. Talking too much was like canal root treatment before, let alone now,” he added. From anyone else, it would have sounded like a joke. Coming from him… it was hard to tell. “So. A lesson to learn. What  _ did  _ you learn, knucklehead?” 

_ He’s too strong. I couldn’t even land a punch or-- _

_ So throw another. Isn’t that how a fight works? You don’t stop hitting just because the first punch wasn’t enough. You keep going until you’re on the ground or they are. _

“... When life hits you, you punch it in the face twice as hard,” Stan found himself saying, then turned to his father. “Not something about responsibility, if that was what you wanted, but it’s still something. Punch life back. I kinda dreamed of punching  _ you  _ in the face, too. Several times.”

“And you’re not going to?”

“No.”

“Would you, if I were any less pathetic?”

“You’re not--” Stan began, only to trail off when his father lifted the cane again, just slightly.

_ Don’t patronize me, _ that single gesture told him.  _ Don’t you dare. _

Stan thought back of when he had seen him in Stanford’s memories, the vicious satisfaction he had felt upon socking him in the jaw. If he tried now, said jaw would probably shatter. “You  _ bet  _ I would,” he finally said, his voice akin to a snarl, and to his utter surprise Filbrick Pines laughed. It was brief and sounded all the world like an instrument that hadn’t been used in a long, long time, but a laugh it was. 

“Hah! Well. Speaking frankly, aren’t you? About time,” he said, and tapped his cane a couple of times against a rock half-buried in the sand. “Good. You knew I would have taken you back in if you returned groveling, don’t you? If anything for your mother’s peace of mind.”

“Yeah.”

“And you didn’t come back.”

“Wasn’t gonna grovel.”

“No, you wouldn’t. Stubborn as a mule and too proud to return empty-handed. I should have known you wouldn’t have come back,” he said, and turned to look at him. Stan found himself looking at his own reflection in the shades. “I wouldn’t have, either.”

Stan opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. Years ago, that would have gained him a sharp command to close his mouth before birds began nesting in it; now his father just looked away, back at the sunset. They stayed silent for a full couple of minutes. 

“Do you want an apology?” Filbrick finally asked. 

Did he? He wasn’t sure. There had been daydreaming of coming back home filthy rich, making him rue the day he had turned his back on him. When he imagined that, there were  _ plenty _ of apologies. He had imagined they would be satisfying to hear. But in his fantasies, his father was as he remembered him: standing tall and unmovable as a rock, not an old man with dementia. Did he really need - did he really  _ want  _ \- an apology now?

“No,” Stan said, more to himself than to his father. “No. I’ve got no use for apologies,” he added, then, “You were wrong.”

_ You were wrong to kick me out. You were wrong about me. Wrong. Deny it all you want, but-- _

Filbrick Pines nodded. “Yes.”

“... Wait. What?”

“You’re not deaf, I hope? I said yes. I was wrong.”

Stan blinked. “... Okay. Yeah. Your brain  _ is _ rotting.”

“Glad you’ve caught on,” his father replied, no hint of humor in his voice. There was another minute of silence, then he sighed and stood, leaning heavily on the cane. “Well. Was that all you needed to hear?”

_ Yes. No. I have no idea. _

“I guess,” he found himself saying instead, and stood as well, holding out his arm to steady his father. “Let’s go home.”

Filbrick shook his head and shrugged his arm off. “A drink first.”

“What?”

“Get your ears checked. I said I want a drink first. Come morning I’ll be babbling nonsense again and drinking warm milk. May as well use this chance while it lasts. Hell knows if and when there will be another.”

“But mom says you shouldn’t drink.”

Before his incredulous gaze, Filbrick Pines laughed for the second time in the space of maybe ten minutes.  _ “But mom says,” _ he parroted him. 

Parroted him. His father. Was. Parroting. Him.

Oh, what the hell - let the old man have what he wanted. They could share at least one drink. Last time they had seen each other, Stan wasn’t even old enough to do it legally. 

“Okay. You know what? Fine. We’ll go and drink, but you’re paying for it,” he said, holding up his arm to help his father walk on the sand. This time, he let him help.

“Fair enough.”

“Just one drink and we’re leaving.”

“Of course.”

It was more than one, but they  _ did  _ make it home to a rather baffled family after some fumbling, and Stan considered it a success. It was their first drink together, and would be the last.

So he had to make it count.


	15. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here's the epilogue - if you read the Journal, you'll definitely know which scenario it's based on!  
> (If you haven't: it's from a parallel reality where Stan left with Jornal 1 when told to, Ford reconnected with McGucket and together they made interdimensional travel possible without allowing Bill access to their world. Happy ending for everyone... except Stan, clearly. So I had to fix that.)
> 
> Well, this is it. Thanks a lot to everyone who read/commented/kudo-ed this. I hope you enjoyed!

> **The Astonishing Anomalies of Gravity Falls**
> 
> Fiddleford H. McGucket, PhD  
>  Stanford F. Pines, PhD 
> 
> _\-- To Stanley Pines, without whom none of this would have seen the light of day_.
> 
> Introduction
> 
> Nikola Tesla once said that the history of science shows that theories are perishable; with every new truth that is revealed, we get a better understanding of Nature and our conceptions and views are modified.
> 
> Much of what is written in this paper defies what most believe to be real; research on the cause of these phenomena is still ongoing. Only by keeping an open mind on the scientific evidence presented in this work, and abandoning all preconceptions…

* * *

Stan had seen it coming from a mile away.

The not at all subtle mention of ‘ongoing research’ was a first hint, as was Stanford’s decision to wait for McGucket to come pick his car up before publishing the revised thesis paper. ‘To discuss a few matters’, he had said, but Stan knew it wasn’t the paper he wanted to talk about: for that, a phone call would have sufficed. If Stanford wanted to wait for a face-to-face chat, there had to be a lot more going on.

The third big hint wasn’t so much something his brother did, but what he did _not_ do. He got rid of the rather creepy amount of Bill-related stuff he kept in his basement, including a golden statue Stan would have rather melted to keep the gold; everything in any way connected to Bill Cipher had to go, and go it did. Except for the one thing his brother did _not_ dismantle.

So really, when Stan went in the kitchen one night to find the door to the basement open and his brother downstairs, staring in silence at the deactivated portal with his arms behind his back, he was not surprised in the slightest.

“So, lemme guess. You’re thinking of firing up this baby and see what’s beyond.”

His words caused Stanford to wince and turn. He looked amazingly guilty, like he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar - something that had never happened when they were kids, really, because that was usually Stan’s role. And he’d never felt guilty when caught, anyway.

“Stanley, I… I hadn’t realized I had woken you up.”

“You didn’t. I woke up on my own,” Stan said with a shrug, and walked up to stand by his twin’s side. “So. Am I right? Is this what you want to discuss with Nerdy?”

“Yes. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but truth be told I haven’t made up my mind yet. It’s… just an idea.”

“An expensive one, huh?” Stan guessed, and grinned, elbowing his brother’s side. “That’s where the money from the paper is gonna go, huh?”

Stanford’s guilty expression melted into a laugh. “Only my part, no worries. And only _if_ Fiddleford believes what I have in mind to be feasible - only if he agrees. If he says no, then that will be it,” he said, then paused for a moment and turned to Stan. “... What do _you_ say?”

Okay then. Stan hadn’t been surprised to find his brother there, but now he _sure_ was. “Whoa there. Are you telling me that if _I_ say ‘nope, don’t do it’, you’ll just scrap this whole thing?”

“I am,” Stanford said, no hint of humor left in his voice, and Stan knew he meant it.

“... Okay. I ain’t saying no just yet. What’s your idea?”

Stanford turned back to the portal. “This is a gateway to other dimensions, and in a way it feels... _wrong_ to keep their existence hidden from mankind. I would never dare activating it with Cipher still around, but now he’s gone.”

“Yeah, but if Nerdy’s rambles are anything to go by, this thing kinda leads into the tenth circle of Hell.”

“It does, as things are. Cipher tricked me into building this portal so that it would lead into his own dimension - the Nightmare realm. However, I think that a dimensional vortex neutralizer might allow us to entirely bypass it, giving whatever dwells in it no opening to come through and leaving other dimensions accessible for us to explore.”

That sorta made sense, in a very sci-fi sort of way. And really, it sounded like an amazing chance: as kids they had wanted to explore the world, but had always been a little put off by the fact explorers had already been pretty much in every corner of Earth, leaving no unknown waters left to map. But what would it be like, to explore _dimensions_ \- and be the first ones to ever do it? Also, getting unbelievably rich and famous in the process would be a nice cherry on top of the cake of awesome.

“Oookay. Let’s say I’m intrigued. _Can_ you build a thing like that? A neutralizer-something?”

Stanford shook his head. “No, not me. If anybody can create something like it, that’s Fiddleford.”

“Looks like we’re gonna have to ask Nerdy, then,” Stan said, then shrugged. “Okay. If he says yes, we go through it together. If he says no, we dismantle this whole thing - wouldn’t even be the first of your inventions I break, huh? - and use the money from the paper to buy, like, a research cruise ship or something. You do the research, I enjoy the cruise.”

The idea made Stanford laugh again. “That sounds tempting,” he admitted, then sobered up. “It might just be what we’ll do. Fiddleford almost lost his sanity to whatever he saw on the other side. I can’t say I truly expect him to agree giving the idea a go.”

Stan shrugged. “Hey, you never know. The guy’s got bigger balls than one would think. I mean, figuratively. Didn’t look myself. Did you?”

Stanford raised an eyebrow. “... Really now?”

“Hey, you were college roommates. Never even got a glimpse?”

“Stanley. He is married.”

“Nope. _Was_ married. Might be your chance, Poindexter.”

Another laugh. “I’ll pretend to have never heard any of this,” he said, turning his back to the portal. “As for the project, I’ll ask next week when he comes for his car. He’s likely to bring his son with him, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t repeat any of this in front of the child. Or at all. Let’s go back to sleep.”

Stan made a dramatic gesture towards the door. “Ladies first,” he said, earning himself light punch on the arm. He rubbed the spot, watching Stanford walk away, and grinned. Not so much because of the joke, but because he had noticed something most wouldn’t have even thought of.

As he left the basement, Stanford didn’t turn to spare another glance at the portal. It was enough for Stan to be certain that yes, if he or McGucket said no, Stanford would just dismantle the portal and never bring it up again. His brother strived to go forward, as he always had, but no longer all on his own.

Never again all on his own.

* * *

_… The inauguration of the International Institute of Oddology in Gravity Falls, Oregon, is undoubtedly the greatest leap ever made in history - not only proving the existence of worlds outside our own, but even allowing mankind to make contact with them._

_“The Dimensional Vortex Neutralizer makes the activation of the portal perfectly safe, but for time being only specialized teams of experts can travel through dimensions for limited amounts of time. We do however have high hopes that, in the future, interdimensional travel will be open to all,” said Dr. Stanford Pines, founder and CEO of the Institute, who took the scientific world by storm last year with the publication of his amazing discoveries._

_According to Chief Operating Officer Dr. Fiddleford McGucket, the team has successfully made contact with a dimension known to its inhabitants as Dimension 52 during its latest expedition._

_“We documented every step, and are looking forward to share all we’ve gathered in a press conference at the end of the month,” he added._

_Both declined to comment allegations that one Stanley Pines, whose title and role in the Institute are still unclear, attempted to sell the Brooklyn Bridge to a seven-eyed alien lady in the course of the expedition. They also denied Mr. Pines’ earlier claims a souvenir shop and guided tours of the Institute are in the works, to the disappointment of local children._

_On other news…_

* * *

“Guys! GUYS! I found another door and it’s all brand new! He explored _another_ dimension!”

“Cool! Let’s go now! I want to see it!”

“Wait, let me take my notebook…”

“Who’s got a camera?”

“I’ve got seven!”

“Oh! I want one!”

“No. You’d just finish all the film to take pictures of noses.”

“I wouldn’t! Liam, tell him!”

“... He’s right, actually. You do that all the time, Billy.”

“Hey! That’s not true! I _also_ take pictures of ears! And teeth!”

“C’mon, Stanford, don’t be a stick in the mud! Let him keep a camera and let’s go.”

The new door wasn’t a long distance away; Stanley and Stanford ran all the way to it, while Bill and Liam hovered right behind them. Really, why did they even bother walking and running when they could _fly_ so easily in the Mindscape? Stanford had said something about a ‘force of habit’, and it sounded really boring, a bit like staying in one place all the time.

Because sure, the beach was great and a lot of fun, but it was just _so_ much better to go out and explore all of the new memories that kept popping up... especially the ones of different dimensions. So far they had met a bunch of warrior piglets with octopus arms - Stanford had gotten a really cool tattoo there - then they had found a dimension where it was mandatory to gamble. It had been a lot of fun, until they had caught him and Stanley cheating, so they had to leave _really_ quickly. Stanford and Liam had been really annoyed at them, because they’d been only halfway through taking notes and snapping pictures of everything they could see and now they were pretty much banned from going back in that memory.

Then there had been the other one - a world called Exwhylia that had looked a lot like the Second Dimension - but they hadn’t explored that one. When Billy had found it, one look had been enough decide he would never, _ever_ take Liam there. They would hate him there, just like at home. They would call him _Irregular._ And they would try to kill him, just like at home.

But it wasn’t really home, was it? Because home is supposed to be a place where you feel _welcome,_ and Liam had never been welcome back there, not at all. No one less than Regular had been.

 _I’m glad it’s gone,_ Billy had thought when he had slammed the door shut, and right there and then it hadn’t even mattered that it was probably what the other Bill had felt like, what he had thought after destroying it. Because they _deserved_ to be gone.

_I’m glad they’re all gone. But I am here, Liam is here, and we’re free._

“Here! This is it!”

The door Stanley had led them to was made of very dark wood, with a brass plaque on it. Most doors seemed to have one: Stanford Pines’ mind was incredibly well-organized.

_Dimension 52._

“What do you think is in here?” Liam asked, floating closer. His eye was wide and almost _sparkling,_ a notebook and a pen already in his hands. Billy thought, not for the first time, that their world just hadn’t _deserved_ him. It hadn’t deserved either of them. “Maybe a new color?”

“Hot alien girls! Or… or the Toffee Peanut Dimension!” Stanley immediately piped in.

“Eldritch abominations!” Stanford exclaimed, holding up a camera. Billy, who was kinda hoping to find a dimension of endless candy or something like it but would _also_ settle for abominations, shrugged and hovered to the door, reaching out to grasp the handle.

“Hey, only one way to find out. Kings of New Jersey?”

“Kings of New Jersey!”

Bill pushed down the handle. The door opened, and they stepped into the unknown.

* * *

**June 2012**

_Ah, summer break. A time for leisure, recreation, and taking it easy... unless you're me._

_My name is Dipper. The girl about to puke is my sister Mabel. You may be wondering what we're doing in an interdimensional shuttle-cart, fleeing from a creature of unimaginable horror. Rest assured, there's a perfectly logical explanation. Let's rewind._

_It all began when our parents finally allowed us to spend the summer at our great uncles' International Institute of Oddology in Gravity Falls, Oregon..._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (For the record: in the end, Stan totally wins the argument and there IS a gift shop in the Institute. Soos and Wendy will obviously work there. Because I say so.)


End file.
